Pandemics & Society Seminar, 25 September: “Labour Scarcity and Productivity: Insights from the Last Nordic Plague”
For the second Pandemics & Society Seminar of our Fall 2025 series we are pleased to welcome Max Marczinek (University of Oxford). The seminar will be held on Thursday, 25 September at the normal time (1600 CEST). More information about our speaker and the presentation is below. You can sign up for email notifications about the seminar series, including the Zoom details, here.
Blurb: In this webinar, Marczinek will present a paper studying the relationship between labour scarcity and productivity in the context of a 1710s plague outbreak. While higher wages should have led to an export contraction, exports grew after plagued regions shifted into capital-intensive production. Using a Ricardian model, he show that productivity growth in capital-intensive sectors is best suited to explain this export boom. Marczinek argue that labour scarcity incentivises capital-intensive production which raises productivity growth.
Biography: Max Marczinek is a 4th year PhD student in Economics at Oxford University. His research studies trade, labour, and economic history. He combine trade models with novel and often historical data sources, using theory to extract new insights from granular data.