Felix S.F. Schaff

I am a Max Weber Fellow and Part-time Assistant Professor at the European University Institute in Florence (Departments of Political & Social Sciences and Economics). I recently received my PhD in economic history from the London School of Economics. I study the long run evolution and the causes of socio-economic inequality, combining microeconometric methods with historical data.

My research investigates historical wealth inequality in Europe and in particular Germany, from the Black Death in the 14th century until the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century.  I try to find answers to a major puzzle in economic history: why was economic inequality already high when industrialisation and modern economic growth began?

One contribution of my work has been to construct inequality statistics such as the top 10% wealth share, the Gini coefficient and poverty indices, for Germany between 1300 and 1850. To obtain statistics for a pre-statistical age, I have used quantitative information from archival documents and national accounting methods. Another contribution of my research has been to shed light on the causes behind the substantial growth in inequality before the Industrial Revolution. I have investigated the effects of several forces grounded in the political economy of early-modern Europe: the Protestant Reformation, warfare and oligarchic governmental institutions.

In my current work I continue to study the historical origins of socio-economic inequality. I want to understand how fundamental geographic factors, and the institutions they shaped, influenced wealth and gender inequality in history.

My latest article "Urban Political Structure and Inequality: Political Economy Lessons from Early Modern German Cities" is forthcoming (June 2024 issue) in The Journal of Economic History. My paper “Warfare and Economic Inequality: Evidence from Preindustrial Germany (c. 1400-1800)” (vol. 89, 2023, 101495) recently came out in Explorations in Economic History.