Research

Publications in journals

• Bowles, S. and M. Fochesato, 2024 "The Origins of Enduring Economic Inequality”, Journal of Economic Literature (forthcoming)

• Belloc, M., Drago, F., Fochesato, M. and R. Galbiati, R., 2024, "Multigenerational Transmission of Wealth: Florence 1404-1480", American Economic Journal: Applied, 16(2), 99-129.

• Bogaard, A., Ortman, S. Birch, J., Cervantes Quequezana, G., Chirikure, S., Crema, E.R., Cruz, P., Feinman, G., Fochesato, M., Green, A. S., Gronenborn, D., Hamerow, H., Jin, G. Kerig, T., Lawrence, D., McCoy, M.D., Munson, J., Roscoe, P., Rosenstock, E., Thompson, A., Petrie, C.A., Kohler, T.A., 2023 “The Global Dynamics of Inequality (GINI) project: analysing archaeological housing data.” Antiquity. 1-7.

• Alfani,G., Bonetti, M. and M. Fochesato, 2024, "Pandemics and socio-economic status. Evidence from the plague of 1630 in northern Italy", Population Studies, 78 (1), 21-42.

• Fochesato, M., Higham, C., Bogaard, A. and C. Castillo, 2021, "Changing Social Inequality from First Farmers to Early States in South East Asia", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118 (47).

• Fochesato, M., 2021, “Plagues, wars, political change and fiscal capacity. Late medieval and renaissance Siena, 1337-1556. Economic History Review.

• Bogaard, A., Fochesato, M. and S. Bowles, S., 2019, “The farming-inequality nexus: new methods and evidence from western Eurasia.” Antiquity, 93 (371), pp. 1129-1143.

[See the paper description at SantaFe Institute News]

[Selected media coverage: The Washington Post, Corriere della Sera

• Fochesato, M., Bogaard, A. and S. Bowles, S., 2019, “Comparing ancient inequalities: the challenge of comparability, bias, and precision.” Antiquity , 93 (370),  pp. 853-869.

• Fochesato, M. , 2018 , “Origins of Europe’s North-South Divide: Population Changes, Real Wages and the ‘Little Divergence’ in Early Modern Europe”, Explorations in Economic History , 70, 91-131.

• Kohler. T., Smith, M., Bogaard, A., Feinman, G.,Peterson, C., Betzenhauser, A., Pailes, M., Elizabeth C. Stone, E., Prentiss, M., Dennehy, T., Ellyson, L., Nicholas, L., Ronald K. Faulseit, R., Styring, A., Whitlam, J., Fochesato, M., Foor, F. and Bowles, S., 2017, “Greater Post-Neolithic Wealth Disparities in Eurasia than Americas”, Nature.     

 [Media coverage:  The Economist, The Washington Post, Science Magazine, NPR, Die Presse]

• Fochesato, M. and Samuel Bowles, 2015 "Nordic exceptionalism? Social democratic egalitarianism in world-historic perspective", Journal of Public Economics, 127, 30-44.

Working Papers

• Alfani, G., Di Tullio, M. and M. Fochesato, 2024, "Wealth inequality and epidemics in the Republic of Venice (1400-1800)". R&R Economic History Review

• Belloc, M., Drago, F., Fochesato, M. and R. Galbiati, R., 2022, "Wealth Accumulation and Institutional Capture: the Rise of the Medici and the Fall of the Florentine Republic". CEPR Press Discussion Paper No. 17456. 

• Bogaard, A., Cruz, P., Fochesato, M., Birch, J., Cervantes Quequezana, G., Chirikure, S., Crema, E., Feinman, G.M., Green, A.S, Jin, G.,  Kerig, T., Hamerow, H., Lawrence, D., McCoy, M.D., Munson, J., Ortman, S., Petrie, C.A., Roscoe, P., “Of labor and land, scarcity and value: land use and the global dynamics of inequality”. R&R PNAS.

• Brioschi A. and Fochesato, M., 2024, “The Determinants of the Skill Premium in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe”. R&R European Economic History Review

• Crema, E., Fochesato, M., Mejía Ramon, A.G., Munson, J., and S. Ortman, “Towards Multiscalar Measures of Inequality in Archaeology”, R&R PNAS.

• Fochesato, M. and Bowles, S., 2024. “Technology, Institutions, and wealth inequality: what do we learn from comparable estimates over 12 millennia?”. CEPR Discussion Paper No. 19064

• Fochesato, M. and Bowles, S., 2024. “Accounting for the Uncertainties and bias in archaeological and historical evidence on wealth inequality”. CEPR Discussion Paper No. 18960

• Kohler, T.A., Bogaard, A.,  Ortman, S., Crema, E., Chirikure,, S., Cruz, P., Green, A. , Kerig, T., McCoy, M., Munson, J., Petrie, C., Thompson, A., Birch, J., Cervantes Quequezana, G., Feinman, G., Fochesato, M. , Gronenborn, D., Hamerow, H., Jin, G., Lawrence, D., Roscoe, P., Rosenstock, E., Erny, G., Kim, H., Ohlrau, R., 2024, “World Prehistory of Wealth Inequality”, R&R PNAS.

Publications in collective volumes

(with A. Bogaard, A. Styring, J. Whitlam, and S. Bowles), 2017, “The agroecology of (in)equality: Integrating Gini coefficients with recent bioarchaeological work on early urbanization in northern Mesopotamia and south-west Germany” in T. A. Kohler and M.E. Smith (eds), Ten Thousand Years of Inequality: The Archaeology of Wealth Differences, Amerind Foundation, Tucson. [link]