摘要
这篇论文有助于讨论工业化前英国生活水平的演变。它强调，为了评估马尔萨斯预测的有效性，必须放弃只注重人均收入和人口规模等观察指标的时间路径的做法。它首先构建了一个马尔萨斯模型，然后开发了一个稳健的算法来识别在前工业化时代塑造总体结果的潜在力量。分析表明，在工业化前的英格兰存在两种截然不同的马尔萨斯制度：一种是生存驱动的制度，死亡率是经济-人口互动的主要潜在力量，另一种是后来出现在15世纪中叶后的技术驱动的制度，其特征是人口和生产力都增长，但死亡率稳定，人均收入长期停滞。本文讨论了各种历史事件(如黑死病、新世界的发现、英国宗教改革)在触发技术驱动制度出现中的作用，并强调了随后生产力增长可能通过的一些中介机制。尽管现代早期的技术动态，但直到17世纪中叶，英国人均收入的长期停滞与统一增长理论的预测是一致的。
Abstract
Abstract This paper contributes to the debate on the evolution of living standards in preindustrial England. It emphasizes the need to depart from the approach of focusing only on the time paths of observables, like income per capita and population size, in order to assess the validity of Malthusian predictions. It first constructs a Malthusian model and then develops a robust algorithm for identifying the latent forces that have shaped aggregate outcomes in the preindustrial era. The analysis suggests the existence of two distinct Malthusian regimes in preindustrial England: a survival-driven regime, where mortality is the main latent force in economic-demographic interactions, and a later technology-driven regime that emerges after the mid-fifteenth century and is characterized by both population and productivity growth but stable mortality and long-run stagnation in per capita income. The paper discusses the role of various historical accidents (e.g., the Black Death, the discovery of the New World, the English Reformation) in triggering the emergence of the technology-driven regime, and it also highlights some mediating mechanisms through which subsequent productivity growth may have been sustained. The existence of long-run stagnation in income per capita in England through the mid-seventeenth century, despite the technological dynamism of the early modern period, is consistent with the predictions of Unified Growth Theory.
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Springer Nature