No Class on Monday 3/24; Homework due that night

1. No Class on Monday 3/24; Homework due that night

2. The Spread of the Black Death • Originated in Asia and spread via trade routes to Europe • Most severe from 1347 to 1351, but sporadic outbreaks occurred later

3. Types of plague (bacterial infection) • Bubonic • Pneumonic (lungs) • Septicemic (blood) Lump is called a buboe Symptoms When Anna hears that her boarder, a journeyman tailor named Mr. Viccars, is sick, she goes to his room and is shocked to see how sick he is. “George Viccars lay with his head pushed to the side by a lump the size of a newborn piglet, a great, shiny, yellow-purple knob of pulsing flesh. His face, half turned away from me because of the excrescence [ ], was flushed scarlet, or rather, blotched, with shapes like rings of rose petals blooming under his skin. His blond hair was a dark, wet mess upon his head, and his pillow was drenched with sweat. There was a sweet, pungent smell in the garret. A smell like rotting apples.” (p. 42)

4. The following evening “Mr. Viccars, muttered and raved, ranted, cursed, and cried out in pain. Much of what he said was incomprehensible. But from time to time he would cease tossing on the pallet and open his eyes wide, rasping ‘Burn it all! Burn it all! For the love of God, burn it!... He died clutching the bedsheet.” (p. 44-45) The next morning “I was still on my hands and knees in the attic, scrubbing the won floorboards, when the first of Mr. Viccar’s customers came rapping on the door. (p. 47) Transmission • “plague goods” • Rat fleas Mary Hatfield caught her son and Anna’s playing with a dead rat. She told Anna, “Can you believe it, Anna, the two of them were playing with these loathsome pests as if they were poppets. The woodpile’s full of them, seemingly. All dead, thanks be for small mercies.” (p. 72) Rat fleas “prefer to avoid humans. The flea will leave the infected rate only when the rodent dies and grows cold” (p. 21)

5. The Effects of the Black Death Demographic Effects • one-third of Europe died. Social Effects • People Fleeing / Fear of Strangers • Search for Scapegoats • Government Policies • Funeral Customs • Lessened Power of Church • “Impetus” to study the body (p.72) “Plague multiplied the number of people on the highways…, but also provoked deep hostility against them, and against all strangers and foreigners” (p.66) Murdered Jews as poisoners of wells; drowned witches • Against the Spread of Future Epidemics (pesthouses, ship quarantines) • Mitigate the Econ Effects (e.g., sumptuary laws)

6. Economic Effects Flight of People with Resources Markets for Goods and Services, such as candles and gravediggers Markets for Factors, e.g., labor, Land and Capital

7. Economic Effects • 50% decrease in rents • Wages doubled Peasant income rose and landowners income fell Wage Willingness to Pay (WTP) = value of Q produce by marginal worker. Labor

8. Typical Book Publisher, 13th & 15th Century Capital Capital – Labor Ratio High (Operators, Printing Presses) Black Death of 14th Century Low (Scribes, Quills) Labor

9. “High labor costs promised big rewards to the inventors of labor-saving devices” (p. 49) Two Forces Shaping R & D into the Tech of K Factor Market Size: focus on tech complementary to abundant inputs. Factor Prices: focus on tech that substitutes for expensive inputs. Suppose you are an 13th (or 15th) Century inventor making a pitch to Venetian bankers, the venture capitalists of their time.

10. Market Failures — Weak Incentives to Innovate? A rival good can only be consumed by one person. My consuming a cup of Starbucks means that you can’t consume the cup. Rival? Yes No Private Good Starbucks coffee Yes Excludable? Public Goods Longitude at Sea No • A good is excludable if a person can be prevented from consuming it. clock versus celestial Government Solution: prizes and patents

11. How does the invention of labor saving capital affect our earlier analysis? Wage Labor

12. Market for Gravediggers and Wax