Scarcity and high salaries : moral economy

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Do epidemic crises promote social equality? If this idea is resurfacing today, it's thanks to a renewed confidence in historians' ability to handle and compare prices and wages over the long term, in order to identify "small" and "large" divergences, according to methodologies that we outline for critical examination. It can also be seen as a return to moral economics, the genealogy of which is proposed here, based on a comparative history of royal labor legislation after the Black Death.

Want to reduce inequality? Try the Black Death (George F. Will, Washington Post, February 3, 2017)
Inequality and big data : the adventures of the Gini coefficient in the long run (Guido Alfani and Matteo Di Tullio, The lion's share: inequality and the rise of the fiscal state in preindustrial Europe, 2019)
Fortune leveling and mass violence: on some unpleasant ideas by Walter Scheidel (A history of inequality. From the Stone Age to the ^twenty-first century, 2019)
A double scandal: impoverishment and enrichment in the moral economy of the ^14th century
Molti cittadini sono rimasti poveri e molti poveri sono diventati ricchi (Florence, October 9, 1348 quoted by Aliberto Falsini, "Firenze dopo il 1348. Le conseguenze della peste nera", Archivio storico italiano, 1941)
The plague, the earthquake and the jubilee: the events of L'Aquila (1348-1350)
Io vidi : prices, wages and moral indignation in the rhymed chronicle of Buccio di Ranallo, who "puts his epic vein at the service of a mercurial of hunger" (Pierre Toubert, "La Peste Noire dans les Abruzzes (1348-1350)", Le Moyen Age, 2014)
Agricultural decline and reconfiguration of terroirs: an overview
Things in the ^14th century: new standards of consumption (Christopher Dyer, Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages, 1989)
Reprise en main seigneuriale et nouveaux asservissements (Vincent Corriol, Les serfs de Saint-Claude. Étude sur la condition servile au Moyen Âge, 2009)
"Le retour de la faim" (Jacques Le Goff): does carrestia mean scarcity or dearth ?
Une dynamique sociale et politique: l'effondrement des droits d'accès d'après Amartya Sen (Pere Benito i Monclus, "Famines sans frontières en Occident avant la conjoncture de 1300: à propos d'une enquête en cours", in Monique Bourin and François Menant eds, Les disettes dans la conjoncture de 1300 en Méditerranée occidentale, 2012)
The crop failures of 1347 in the perfect storm (Bruce Campbell, The Great Transition: Climate, Disease and Society in the Late-Medieval World, 2015)
"Winners and losers: the gap widens" (Monique Bourin, Sandro Carocci, François Menant and Luis To Figueras, "Les campagnes de la Méditerranée occidentale autour de 1300 : tensions destrurices, tensions novatrices", Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 2011)
Differentiated impacts according to market configurations: Mark Bailey, After the Black Death. Economy, society, and the law in fourteenth-century England, 2021
Can we model the pace of urban recovery? (Mark Koyama, Remi Jedwab and Noel Johnson, "Pandemics, Places, and Populations: Evidence from the Black Death", GMU Working Papers in Economics, 2019)
Symmetry and commensurability: the plague in Egypt and England (Stuart J. Borsch, The Black Death in Egypt and England. A Comparative Study, 2005)
The historiographical race to great and small divergences (Sevket Pamuk, "The Black Death and the origins of the "Great Divergence" across Europe, 1300-1600", European Review of Economic History, 2007)
Iberian specificities in the relationship between population and land availability: Guillermo Castan Lanaspa, La Construccio de la idea de la peste negra come catastrofe demografica en la historiografia espanola, 2021
The Europe of high mortality and high wages
"All the workers and their families demanded excessive wages" (Gilles Li Muisit): the Tournai observatory of the so-called "golden age of wage-earning" (Claire Billen and Marc Boone ed., Bans et édits de la ville de Tournai en temps de peste (1349-1351), 2021 )
Were we witnessing the "deconversion of feudal society" in the ^14th century? (Robert Castel, Métamorphoses de la question sociale. Chronique du salariat, 1995)
"Because a large portion of the population, especially among laborers and servants died of pestilence..." the Statute of Labourers (1351) in context (Samuel Cohn, "After the Black Death: Labour Legislation and Attitudes Towards Labour in Late-Medieval Western Europe", The Economic History Review, 2007)
From one deflation to another: English wage levels in 1347 (John H. Munro, " Before and after the Black Death: money, prices, and wages in fourteenth-century England",MPRA Papers, 2009)
The enforcement of labor laws: towards intrusive government ? (Robert C. Palmer, English Law in the age of the Black Death, 1348-1381. A Transformation of Governance and Law, 1993)
"Grey were their garments/Then for these people, the world/was well ordered in its state": John Gower, philosopher of labor (Mathieu Arnoux, Le temps des laboureurs. Travail, ordre esocial et croissance en Europe (^XIe-XIVe siècle), 2012)
Political contexts and moral scandals: the fault of workers (Robert Braid, " Et non ultra. Politiques royales du travail en Europe occidentale au ^XIVe siècle", Bibliothèque de l'Ecole des Chartes, 2003)
Famines, inequalities, growth: a look back at the concept of moral economy (Jean-Pierre Devroey, La nature et le roi. Environment, power and society in the age of Charlemagne, 2019)
"An immense possibility of discourse" (Michel Foucault, "La vie des hommes infâmes" 1977)
Who would dare mock Master Fifi? The contagion of infamy (Giacomo Todeschini, Au pays des sans-nom. Gens de mauvaise vie, personnes suspectes ou ordinaires du Moyen Âge à l'époque moderne, 2015).