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The real urban wage in an agricultural economy without landless farmers: Serbia, 1862–1910 †
Author(s) -
Mijatović Boško,
Milanović Branko
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
the economic history review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.014
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1468-0289
pISSN - 0013-0117
DOI - 10.1111/ehr.12998
Subject(s) - wage , subsistence agriculture , economics , consumption (sociology) , agriculture , labour economics , welfare , real wages , order (exchange) , wage labour , subsistence economy , economy , market economy , geography , sociology , social science , archaeology , finance
This article presents the first estimates of the welfare ratio for Serbia using nineteenth‐ and early twentieth‐century data on the wages of skilled and unskilled workers (including the part paid in kind) and the prices of goods in ‘subsistence’ and ‘respectability’ consumption baskets. It finds stagnation in the unskilled wage, and a modest increase in the skilled wage. The article introduces several adjustments to conventional methodology in order to make it more relevant for predominantly agricultural societies.