World-System (1460-1540): The WL16 Model

The Long Sixteenth Century Model (WL16) looks at the first Volume of Immanuel Wallerstein's World-System I, Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy. The model uses the Maddison Data Base and global temperature data from the IPCC to estimate a state space model (see the Measurement Matrix, below). The results are presented in the graphic above.

The first state variable, W1=(Q+N-T) is an Environmental Controller (Error Correcting Controller, ECC). The first sate variable in most 20th Century models (here) are growth components weighting all the available indicators positively. In the Long 16th Century, growth was controlled by global temperature.

The second state variable, W2=(Q+T) captures overall growth and eventual decline in production (Q) and global temperature (T). The decline starts in about 1575.

The decline in (Q+T) has been conventional called the Little Ice Age (see the graphic above from Waldinger, 2022).

The third state variable, W2=(Q-N), is the Malthusian ECC which is cyclical and hits the Malthusian crisis low point in 1600, right at the bottom of the Little Ice Age.

You can run the WL16 model here. The model is unstable due to the unstable (Q+T) component. Instructions for stabilizing the model are contained within the code. Boiler Plate can be found here.

Notes

The three state variables presented at the beginning of this pose were constructed from standardized data using the following Principal Components measurement matrix.

For more technical information about Dynamic Component Models (DCMS) read the Boiler Plate.