期刊名称：Discussion Papers in Economic and Social History / Oxford University
出版年度：2009
卷号：2009
出版社：Oxford
摘要：Between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries English peasants faced large income
shocks relative to mean incomes. Innovations in property rights over land induced
peasants to respond by trading small parcels of land as part of their risk coping strategy.
The same period witnessed a dramatic increase in inequality in the distribution of peasant
landholdings. We argue that these events are related. When agents are able to trade their
productive assets to manage risk, wealth dynamics become unstable and generate
increasing inequality over time. We analyze the effects of these dynamics in the context
of medieval English land markets and peasant landholdings.
