A COMPARISON of the OTTOMAN and the EUROPEAN ECONOMIES IN THE XIV and XV CENTURIES

Abstract

This article focuses on a comparative analysis on the Ottomnan and the European economies in the XIV and XV centuries according to the economic perfbrmances and the economic structures. Limited comparative analysis have been made on this issue in the literature of Turkish Economic History. So it has been an encouraging factor for this study, hit comparisotn of the economnic structures, the basic components - agricuiture, industry atid commercial sectors-and economic resources have been considered. During the study, I observed that these two societies displayed the same economic performances (wage rises, recession and deflation etc.) because of sharing the same era and similar economic conditions. However from the XV century, economic performances of these two economies differentiated from each other owing to the increase of the structural differences in Europeans favour. Taking this result into account, this study provides that differences in the economic performances between countries can be explained by the characteristics of the economic structures. Besides, as a one of the inferences of this paper, it is propounded that the informal economy might be larger in the Europe comparing to the Ottoman Empire due to the lack of an organized cadastral survey system in the XIV and XV centuries.