Macroeconomic relationships between population productivity and wages

The aim of this essay is to investigate the economic relationships between population wage and labor productivity. Malanima (2004) suggests an inverse relationship between population growth and wage evolution at least until the Industrial Revolution when the increased productivity allowed a real wage growth even if population was rising as well. Empirical evidence seems to confirm this hypothesis in the case of the United Kingdom and partially of Italy. However in Switzerland it seems that the rise in productivity was not able to counterbalance the downward pressure on wage due to workforce abundance. The time horizon considered ranges from the end of the XIII century to the beginning of the XX century for the three countries considered.