International Conference
Money, prices, and wages in preindustrial Europe
2-4 november 2026
Valencia
Ninety years after the publication of Earl J. Hamilton’s Money, Prices, and Wages in Valencia, Aragon, and Navarre, 1351–1500 (1936), this conference revisits a landmark of twentieth-century economic history whose data remain a resource for historians today. Hamilton’s legacy provides both an occasion for reflection and a starting point for assessing how the field has changed. Bringing together research on medieval and early modern Europe, the conference explores money, prices and wages through questions of living standards, consumption baskets, household incomes and inequality, with particular attention to working time, women’s and children’s paid labour, and care.
By placing new evidence and methods in comparative perspective, it asks what prices and wages reveal—and what they leave unrecorded—about the distribution of resources and the conditions of everyday life. Returning to Hamilton thus opens onto a broader history of how Europeans worked, earned and lived.
President: Antoni Furió · Secretary: Jordi Quiles
PROGRAMA
MONDAY, 2 NOVEMBER
MORNING. SESSION 1
09:30 Opening remarks
10:00 Keynote lecture · Robert C. Allen — New York
University Abu Dhabi
Price and Wage History: A Lens on the Past
10:30 Coffee break
Hamilton and the Price Revolutions
Chair: Daniel Tirado — Universitat de València
11:00 Richard W. Unger — University of British Columbia
The Times and Life of Earl Jefferson Hamilton (1899–1989)
11:30 Manuel González Mariscal — Universidad de Sevilla
The Price Revolution in Spain and the Enduring Relevance of Hamilton’s Ideas Almost a Century after Their Publication
12:00 Rodney Edvinsson — Stockholms universitet
Sweden as a Case Study in Hidden Medieval Inflation: Silver Scarcity and the Twelfth-Century Price Revolution in European Perspective
12:30 Discussion
MONDAY, 2 NOVEMBER
AFTERNOON SESSION 2
Money, Prices and Markets
Chair: Sandra de Pleijt — Wageningen University & Research
15:30 Marc Bompaire — École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE-PSL)
Monetary Quantifications for France from the Thirteenth to the Fifteenth Centuries
16:00 Rita Martins de Sousa & António Castro Henriques — Universidade de Lisboa
Changes in Money, Changes in Prices? Portugal, 1247–1807
16:30 Carlos Álvarez Nogal — Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
Expectations and Inflation in Castile: The vellón Crisis at the Beginning of Philip IV’s Reign (1624–1629)
17:00 Coffee break
17:30 Roman Zaoral — Univerzita Karlova
Prices and Wages in the Central European Cities, 13th–16th Centuries
18:00 Francesco Ammannati — Università di Firenze
The Price of Knowledge: Book Prices, Markets, and the Value of Print in Early Modern Europe
18:30 Discussion
TUESDAY, 3 NOVEMBER
MORNING SESSION 3
Wages, Income and Living Standards in the Long Run
Chair: Bruce M. S. Campbell — Queen’s University of Belfast
09:30 Stephen N. Broadberry — University of Oxford
Real Wages and GDP per Capita in Early Modern Europe: Can They Be Reconciled?
10:00 Mikołaj Malinowski — Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
Before the Partitions: Taxation, Income, and Distribution in Poland-Lithuania around 1790
10:30 Miquel Faus (Universitat de València), Antoni Furió (Universitat de València) and José Joaquín García Gómez (Universidad de Almería)
Long-Term Income Dynamics in Mediterranean Europe: New Evidence from Valencia, 1250–1850
11:00 Coffee break
11:30 David González Agudo — Universitat de València
Castilian Wages in the Long Run: Toledo 1517–1800
12:00 Leandro Prados de la Escosura — Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
Ingenuity and the Reversal of Fortune: Spain and Britain, 1501-1800
12:30 Discussion
TUESDAY, 3 NOVEMBER
AFTERNOON SESSION 4
Labour Markets and Wage Formation
Chair: Maria A. Pons — Universitat de València
15:30 Jordan Claridge — London School of Economics and Political Science
The Black Death as a Structural Labour Market Transformation? Evidence from the Manorial Labour Share
16:00 Franco Franceschi — Università di Siena
Earning a Wage: Children and Young Workers in the Florentine Wool Industry, 14th–15th Centuries
16:30 Coffee break
17:00 Leonardo Ridolfi — Università di Siena
Wage Dispersion and Working Time in a Leading Pre-Industrial Economy: Tuscany, 14th–16th Century
17:30 Judy Stephenson — University College London
Wages before Machines: Imperfectly Competitive Explanations for the Trajectory of Wages in Early Modern England
18:00 Discussion
WEDNESDAY, 4 NOVEMBER
MORNING SESSION 5
Wages, Gender and Inequality
Chair: Daniel Muñoz — Universitat de València
09:30 Sam Geens — Universiteit Antwerpen
Gender, Wages, and the Little Divergence in the Low Countries (1280–1550)
10:00 Sandra de Pleijt — Wageningen University & Research
Women’s Wages and Gender Wage Inequality in the Northern Part of the Low Countries, ca. 1400–1800
10:30 Ramón Lanza García — Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Skill Premium and Labour Market in Early Modern Spain
11:00 Coffee break
11:30 Jane Whittle — University of Exeter
The Gender Pay Gap in English Rural Wages c.1300–1800
12:00 Jane Humphries — University of Oxford, All Souls College
Care-less Costs of Living and Care-free Standards of Living: Putting Care and the Labour of Caring into Economic History
12:30 Discussion
WEDNESDAY, 4 NOVEMBER
AFTERNOON SESSION 6
Households, Distribution and Institutions
Chair: Juan Vicente García Marsilla — Universitat de València
15:30 Antoni Mas — Universitat de les Illes Balears
Ultimately, an Economic Calculation: Income, Expenditure, and the Cost of Social Reproduction among Majorcan Peasant Households, Fourteenth to Seventeenth Centuries
16:00 Bo Franzén — Stockholms universitet
Medieval Swedish Mining Industry: A Paradox Explaining the Formation of Sweden as a National State?
16:30 Coffee break
17:00 Marco Conti — Université Bordeaux Montaigne
Administration, Salaries, and State Formation: Preliminary Reflections on the Case of Périgueux (14th–16th Centuries)
17:30 António Castro Henriques — ISEG, Universidade de Lisboa
Testing the «Frontier Economy» Hypothesis. Real Wages and Welfare Ratios in Reconquista Portugal, 1140–1290
18:00 Discussion
19:00 Closing remarks and farewell
