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

在中世纪的英格兰，农民与地主签订合同，在地主的农田上劳作几天，以换取一定数量的土地。虽然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说明这种契约的合理性。在中世纪的农业中，照料耕田和犁田的牲畜是很重要的。当地主拥有马和牛，并让雇工照看牲畜时，工人就没有动力为这项工作花费太多时间。这导致了农田生产力的下降。相反，如果农民有耕作自己的土地和地主土地的耕畜，农民就有足够的动力来照顾它们。房东们利用这些精心照料的动物，提高了他们私有土地的生产率。因此，为了诱使拥有马牛的农民签订劳务合同，房东给他们的房客一些“租金”。因此，我们的模型预测，农民在从事劳务时的负担比他们支付固定租金时要轻；以每项任务的工资估计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年的百卷记录来验证这一假设，从这些记录中我们建立了一个大约11,000个不自由的农民财产的数据库。这项分析表明，租户提供的劳务价值通常低于固定租金。由于拥有耕作牲畜的农民是私营农业不可缺少的，“理性的”地主要求这些农民提供劳务，以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.