An Quantitative Analysis of Agricultural Institution and Market System in Medieval England

在中世纪的英国，农民与地主签订合同，在地主的农田上工作几天，以换取一定数量的土地。尽管许多历史学家认为这种“劳务”是一种非理性的“封建”习俗，但我们建立了一个经济模型来显示这种契约的合理性。在中世纪的农业中，照顾犁地和耙地的牲畜是很重要的。当地主拥有牛马，让雇工看管牲畜时，雇工就没有动力花太多时间去做这件事。这导致了农田生产力的下降。相比之下，如果农民饲养牲畜用于耕种自己的土地和地主的自留地，农民就有足够强的动力去照顾它们。地主利用这些饲养良好的动物，提高了他们领地的生产力。因此，为了促使拥有马匹和牛的农民签订劳务合同，地主给佃户一定的“租金”。因此，我们的模型预测，当农民提供劳务时，他们的负担比他们支付固定租金时要轻；按每项工作的工资估算的每英亩劳务的货币价值低于固定租金。接下来，我们根据1279-80年的《百卷》记录验证这一假设，从中我们建立了一个大约11,000个非自由农民财产的数据库。这一分析表明，租有一块或半块童贞地（即养牛养马的必要土地）的人所从事的劳动价值通常低于固定租地的价值。由于拥有役畜的农民是自耕农不可缺少的，“理性的”地主要求这些农民提供劳动力，以换取相对较低的租金提供大片土地。

In medieval England, peasants made a contract with a landlord to work on the lord's farmland for certain days in exchange for holding an amount of land. Although many historians have regarded this "labor services" as an irrational, "feudal" custom, we built an economic model which shows the rationality of this contract. In medieval agriculture, it is important to take care of livestock which plough and harrow fields. When the landlord possesses horses and oxen and lets hired laborers tend the livestock, the workers do not have incentive to spend much time for that task. This results in declining productivity of the farmland. In contrast, if peasants keep draft-animals which they use for cultivating their own land as well as the landlords' demesne, the peasants have strong enough incentive to take care of them. Exploiting the well cared animals, landlords enhance the productivity of their demesne. Therefore, to induce peasants who possess horses and oxen to make a contract of labor services, landlords give some "rent" to their tenants. Thus, our model predicts that peasants bear a lighter burden when they perform labor services than when they pay fixed rent; the monetary value of labor services per acre estimated by the wage of each task is lower than the fixed rent. Next, we validate this hypothesis against the record of the Hundred Rolls of 1279-80, from which we make a database of approximately 11,000 unfree peasant holdings. This analysis shows that the value of labor services performed by tenants of one or half a virgate, the necessary amount of land to keep horses and oxen, was usually less than that of fixed rent. Since peasants possessing draft-animals were indispensable for demesne farming, "rational" landlords required these peasants labor services in exchange for providing large plots at a relatively low rent.