No Class on Monday 3/24; Homework due that night

The Spread of the Black Death

• Originated in Asia and spread via trade routes to Europe

• Most severe from 1347 to 1351, but sporadic outbreaks occurred later

Types of plague (bacterial infection)

• Bubonic• Pneumonic (lungs)• Septicemic (blood)

Symptoms

When Anna hears that her boarder, a journeyman tailor named Mr. Viccars, is sick, she goes to his room and is shocked to see how sick he is.

“George Viccars lay with his head pushed to the side by a lump the size of a newborn piglet, a great, shiny, yellow-purple knob of pulsing flesh. His face, half turned away from me because of the excrescence [ ], was flushed scarlet, or rather, blotched, with shapes like rings of rose petals blooming under his skin. His blond hair was a dark, wet mess upon his head, and his pillow was drenched with sweat. There was a sweet, pungent smell in the garret. A smell like rotting apples.” (p. 42)

Lump is called a buboe

The following evening

“Mr. Viccars, muttered and raved, ranted, cursed, and cried out in pain. Much of what he said was incomprehensible. But from time to time he would cease tossing on the pallet and open his eyes wide, rasping ‘Burn it all! Burn it all! For the love of God, burn it!... He died clutching the bedsheet.” (p. 44-45)

“I was still on my hands and knees in the attic, scrubbing the won floorboards, when the first of Mr. Viccar’s customers came rapping on the door. (p. 47)

The next morning

Transmission

• “plague goods”

• Rat fleasMary Hatfield caught her son and Anna’s playing with a dead rat. She told Anna, “Can you believe it, Anna, the two of them were playing with these loathsome pests as if they were poppets. The woodpile’s full of them, seemingly. All dead, thanks be for small mercies.” (p. 72)

Rat fleas “prefer to avoid humans. The flea will leave the infected rate only when the rodent dies and grows cold” (p. 21)

Social Effects

The Effects of the Black Death

Demographic Effects

one-third of Europe died.

• People Fleeing / Fear of Strangers

• Search for Scapegoats

• Government Policies

• Funeral Customs

• Lessened Power of Church

• “Impetus” to study the body (p.72)

Murdered Jews as poisoners of wells; drowned witches

• Against the Spread of Future Epidemics (pesthouses, ship quarantines)

• Mitigate the Econ Effects (e.g., sumptuary laws)

“Plague multiplied the number of people on the highways…, but also provoked deep hostility against them, and against all strangers and foreigners” (p.66)

Economic Effects

1. Flight of People with Resources

2. Markets for Goods and Services, such as candles and gravediggers

3. Markets for Factors, e.g., labor, Land and Capital

Economic Effects

• 50% decrease in rents

• Wages doubled

Peasant income rose and landowners income fell

Wage

Labor

𝑺𝟏𝟑𝑺𝟏𝟓

𝒘𝟏𝟑

𝒘𝟏𝟓

𝑳𝟏𝟑

𝑫𝟏𝟑=𝑫𝟏𝟓

𝑳𝟏𝟓𝑳𝟏𝟑(𝟐𝟑 )

Willingness to Pay (WTP) = value of Q produce by

marginal worker.

Typical Book Publisher, 13th & 15th Century

Labor

Capital

𝐿15 𝐿13

𝐾 13

𝐾 15

(Scribes, Quills)

(Operators, Printing Presses)

Capital – Labor Ratio

High

Low

Black Death of 14th

Century

Two Forces Shaping R & D into the Tech of K

1. Factor Market Size: focus on tech complementary to abundant inputs.

2. Factor Prices: focus on tech that substitutes for expensive inputs.

Suppose you are an 13th (or 15th) Century inventor making a pitch to Venetian bankers, the venture capitalists of their time.

“High labor costs promised big rewards to the inventors of labor-saving devices” (p. 49)

Rival?Yes No

Yes

No

Excludable?

A rival good can only be consumed by one person. My consuming a cup of Starbucks means that you can’t consume the cup.

A good is excludable if a person can be prevented from consuming it.

Private GoodStarbucks coffee

Public GoodsLongitude at Sea

clock versus celestial

Government Solution: prizes and patents

Market Failures — Weak Incentives to Innovate?

How does the invention of labor saving capital affect our earlier analysis?

Wage

Labor

𝑺𝟏𝟑𝑺𝟏𝟓

𝒘𝟏𝟑

𝒘𝟏𝟓

𝑳𝟏𝟑

𝑫𝟏𝟓

𝑳𝟏𝟓

𝑫𝟏𝟑

Market for Gravediggers and Wax