The Political Economy of Status Competition: Sumptuary Laws in Preindustrial Europe
中文摘要
基于社会地位对服装进行规制的禁奢令,是前现代国家政治经济的重要组成部分。我们引入一个模型,刻画了普通民众的消费会对统治精英构成地位威胁这一理念。我们的模型预测收入具有非单调效应——禁奢立法起初随收入上升而增加,但随着收入进一步增加而下降。对于汲取性程度较低的国家,这种初始上升更可能出现,因为其统治精英面临来自崛起的商业阶层更大的地位威胁。我们利用一个新构建的国家与城市层面禁奢令数据集检验这些预测。
Abstract
Sumptuary laws that regulated clothing based on social status were an important part of the political economy of premodern states. We introduce a model that captures the notion that consumption by ordinary citizens poses a status threat to ruling elites. Our model predicts a non-monotonic effect of income—sumptuary legislation initially increases with income, but then falls as income increases further. The initial rise is more likely for states with less extractive institutions, whose ruling elites face a greater status threat from the rising commercial class. We test these predictions using a new dataset of country and city-level sumptuary laws.