This study addresses a gap in the existing literature concerning pre-industrial economic growth in France. While traditionally research focused on measuring the output of specific regions (Baehrel, 1961; Le Roy Ladurie, 1966) or the estimation of national indices of production by the end of the pre-industrial era (Toutain, 1961, 1987), this study is an attempt to provide a comprehensive reconstruction of the main contours of economic growth in France from the phase of early state formation to the Revolution. In Chapter 1 we trace the history of real wages for male construction workers and farmers in France from 1250 to 1789. Using a new extensive body of empirical evidence it is shown that real wages were trendless between the second half of 1300 and the end of the eighteenth century. We detect a single episode of sustained growth between the 1280s and the 1350s and document the existence of a large realwage gap between France and the Continent (a French Little divergence) in the post-plague era during the Hundred Years’ War. In addition, comparing wages with population we found that the inverse relationship predicted by the Malthusian theory was an exception rather than the rule. In Chapter 2 we provide a broad characterization of working time in pre-industrial Europe concentrating on three different dimensions of time: calendar, actual and implied working year. Looking at the experience of construction workers, we provide the first direct estimates of trends in calendar, actual and implied working year in France and England from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century. By comparing the patterns of change of time-use, and their response to variations in the institutional and market conditions, we identify two distinct regimes of industriousness featuring France and England in the pre-industrial era. In France, expansions in the offer of labour were associated with raising inflation and economic hardship. By contrast, in England, we found evidence of the existence of two phases where workers supplied more days of work to the market than required by basic household subsistence. The first episode, never documented yet, occurred between 1400 and 1500, while the second corresponded to the industrious revolution originally described by De Vries (2008). Different hypotheses are discussed to shed light on the origin of surplus labour input and its implications on the structure of consumption and production. Chapter 3 presents new estimates of agricultural and total output per capita in France between 1280 and 1789 using the demand side approach. Overall, we find that in the course of almost six centuries, the most significant gains in living standards were reached between the 1280s, when royal power in France reached its medieval apogee, and the 1340s when the Black Death of 1348 and to a larger extent the Hundred Years’ War interrupted it. Following literary evidence, we suggest that in this phase, output gains were associated with the particular form of evolution of the French monarchical state, and its ramifications on real wages through changes in class structure and property relationship. Subsequently, our estimates do not exhibit any sustained trend improvement in the levels of output per capita. This evolution is consistent with the characterization of French economic growth put forward by Le Roy Ladurie (1966, 1977) arguing that the pre-industrial French economy was virtually a stagnating, growthless system.

中文翻译：

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法国历史上的经济：路易九世到大革命（1250-1789年）的实际工资，工作日和经济表现的研究

这项研究解决了有关法国工业前经济增长的现有文献中的空白。传统上，研究集中在衡量特定地区的产出（Baehrel，1961； Le Roy Ladurie，1966）或在工业化时代结束之前估算国家生产指数（Toutain，1961，1987）。试图对法国从早期国家组建到革命时期的经济增长的主要轮廓进行全面的重建。在第一章中，我们追溯了1250年至1789年法国男性建筑工人和农民的实际工资历史。使用大量新的经验证据表明，实际工资在1300年下半年到2000年底之间没有趋势。十八世纪。我们检测到1280年代和1350年代之间出现了一次持续增长的事件，并记录了在百年战争后的瘟疫时代，法国与欧洲大陆之间存在巨大的实际工资差距（法国的小分歧）。此外，通过比较工资与人口，我们发现马尔萨斯理论所预测的逆向关系是一个例外，而不是规则。在第2章中，我们对工业化前欧洲的工作时间进行了广泛的描述，着重于时间的三个不同方面：日历，实际和隐含工作年。回顾建筑工人的经验，我们提供了对14世纪至18世纪法国和英国日历，实际和隐含工作年的趋势的直接估计。通过比较时间使用方式的变化，以及它们对制度和市场条件变化的反应，我们确定了工业化前时代法国和英国为特征的两种不同的勤劳制度。在法国，提供劳动力的增加与通货膨胀和经济困难有关。相比之下，在英格兰，我们发现存在两个阶段的证据，即工人向市场提供的工作天数超过基本家庭生活所需的工作天数。第一集，尚未记录，发生在1400至1500年之间，而第二集对应于De Vries（2008）最初描述的辛勤革命。讨论了不同的假设，以阐明剩余劳动力投入的来源及其对消费和生产结构的影响。第三章使用需求方方法提出了1280年至1789年法国人均农业总产值的新估算。总的来说，我们发现，在将近六个世纪的过程中，生活水平的最显着提高是在1280年代（当时法国的皇家政权达到中世纪最高点）和1340年代（1348年的黑死病）之间，并且在更大程度上一百年战争中断了它。根据文学证据，我们建议在这一阶段，产出的增长与法国君主制国家演变的特定形式有关，并且通过阶级结构和财产关系的变化对法国实际工资产生影响。因此，我们的估计并没有显示出人均产出水平的任何持续趋势改善。