The Rich in Florence Six Centuries Apart

choi

(1) The WSJ report in (2) is about a scholarly paper, which is (1)(b). Read (1)(b) only in text related to Table IIm by following my instruction there.  And read (2).

(a) Guglielmo Barone and Sauro Mocetti, What's Your (Sur)name? Intergenerational Mobility Over Six Centuries. VoxEU, May 17, 2016.
http://voxeu.org/article/what-s- ... -over-six-centuries

, which is condensed from a scholarly paper:

(b) Guglielmo Barone and Sauro Mocetti, Intergenerational Mobility in the Very Long Run: Florence 1427-2011. Banca d'Italia (Italian for "Bank of Italy"), April 2016 (working paper 1060).
https://www.bancaditalia.it/pubb ... 60/en_tema_1060.pdf

My comment:
(a)
(i) Go directly to Table 2 at page 28. The ranking is based on the second column: "Average Euros (2011)" (not any indicator in 1427) in decreasing order.
(ii) The text explains Table 2 is found in pages 13-14.
(iii) When I view Table 2 (first), I was surprised that the 2011 descendants of the 1427 "medical doctor" do not earn much. Then again, it is because in ancient time, a "medical doctor" was a mere barber. In any event, the text at pp 13-14 does not explain why descendants of the 1427 medical doctors earn little.

(b) name meaning:
(i) Guglielmo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guglielmo
(Italian form of William)
(ii) Italian English dictionary:
* barone (noun masculine; from Late Latin or Medieval Latin barō): "baron"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/barone
(iii) The Italian surname Sauro is from the "nickname for someone with light brown hair, from sauro 'sorrel color' (usually applied to a horse)."

choi

(2) Josh Zumbrun, Florence's Rich Stay Rich -- for 600 Years. Wall Street Journal, May 20, 2016.
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2 ... s-as-600-years-ago/

Quote: "The wealthiest surnames in Florence today belong to families that, in 1429, were members of the shoemakers' guild — at the 97th percentile of income. Descendants of members of the silk guild and descendants of attorneys — both at the 93rd percentile in 1427 — are among the wealthiest families today.

Note:
(a) "Their [Barone and Mocetti's] research was made possible by a fiscal crisis. In 1427, Florence was near bankrupt from an ongoing war with Milan and so the Priors of the Republic conducted a tax census of about 10,000 citizens. They took stock of the name and surname of the head of household, their occupation and their wealth."
(i) Republic of Florence
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Florence
(1115–1532; section 3.2 Milan wars: Gian Galeazzo Visconti (1351 – 1402) was (first) Duke of Milan (1395-1402) who headed Duchy of Milan and "dreams of uniting all of northern Italy into one kingdom" + "Milanese troops devastated the Florentine contado")
(ii) Italian English dictionary:
* contado (noun masculine; from Latin [particle masculine; perfect participle of comitor] comitātus [accompanied]): "countryside surrounding a city"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/contado
(iii) prior (n and adj share the same etymology: from Late Latin, administrator, from Latin, former, superior [as an adjective])
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/prior

(b) "The economist Gregory Clark at the University of California, Davis, has written a book 'The Son Also Rises' showing how wealth and status can persist for centuries."

Gregory Clark with Neil Cummins, Yu Hao and Daniel Diaz Vidal, The Son Also Rises; Surnames and the history of social mobility. Princeton University Press, 2014.

(c) "Still, the length that Florentine families have remained high status remains remarkable. Consider, in 1427, the Renaissance masters Leonardo da Vinci [1452 – 1519] and Michelangelo [1475 – 1564] had not been born. Florence would go from rule under the Medici family [1434-1494], to a Republic, back to the Medici [1512-1527, 1531-1737 when the last Medici (Gian Gastone de' Medici) died childless].The city would fall to the Holy Roman Empire following the 10-month Siege of Florence. The Medici line would go extinct, the city would be taken over by Napoleon [1808-1814]. It would lose its role as the head of a city-state to become part of the Kingdom of Italy, under Rome. The fascist dictator Benito Mussolini would rule from 1922 to 1943, followed by a Nazi occupation of Florence. Following the war, the city would undergo a period known as the 'miracolo economic italiano' — the Italian economic miracle — with GDP growing more than 8% a year. Per capita GDP would grow more in this period than in the entire five centuries from 1400 to 1900."
(i) Siege of Florence (1529–30)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Florence_(1529–30)
(Holy Roman Emperor Charles V attempted to gain favor from Pope Clement VII [born Giulio di Giuliano de' Medici] and ordered his armies to seize Florence and return the Medici to power -- they succeded fter the siege)
(ii) Kingdom of Italy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Italy
(1861-1946; capitals vary, see right column)

(d) You may stop here because the print ends soon after this.