Showing papers in "The Journal of Economic History in 1986"

Catching Up, Forging Ahead, and Falling Behind

Abstract: A widely entertained hypothesis holds that, in comparisons among countries, productivity growth rates tend to vary inversely with productivity levels. A century of experience in a group of presently industrialized countries supports this hypothesis and the convergence of productivity levels it implies. The rate of convergence, however, varied from period to period and showed marked strength only during the first quarter-century following World War II. The general process of convergence was also accompanied by dramatic shifts in countries' productivity rankings. The paper extends the simple catch-up hypothesis to rationalize the fluctuating strength of the process and explores the connections between convergence itself and the relative success of early leaders and latecomers.

A peculiar population: the nutrition, health, and mortality of American slaves from childhood to maturity.

Abstract: The author examines the nutrition health and mortality of the American slave population in the first half of the nineteenth century using data from ships manifests. "Height and mortality data...indicate that the greatest systematic variation in health and nutrition occurred by age. Nourishment was exceedingly poor for slave children but workers were remarkably well fed. The unusual growth-by-age profile for slaves has implications for views on the postwar economic fortunes of blacks the interpretation of findings of other height studies and conceptions of slaveowner decision making the slave family and the slave personality." (EXCERPT)

Industrialization and Regional Inequality: Wages in Britain, 1760–1914

Abstract: This paper describes the geographical pattern of wages in Britain between 1760 and 1914. It then draws out some of the implications of the wages pattern and considers, in particular, the implications for the “growth pole” debate on the likely effect of industrialization upon regional income inequalities. The market forces responsible for creating and maintaining these differentials are then described, followed by a final section which discsusses the significance of changing regional wage differentials to the standar-of-living debate. It concludes that from a regional perspective the overall effects of industrialization upon living standards are indisputably favorable.

What Do Bosses Really Do

Abstract: If employers make so much money, why don't workers hire machines and expertise and make the money instead? This question has generated a large body of writing, including Stephen Marglin's much-cited article “What Do Bosses Do?” Marglin draws on history to argue that the employer, who added nothing to technical efficiency, used specialization of tasks to divide labor and impose himself as boss, thereby creating an artificial, unproductive role. These arrangements were embodied in domestic industry and were reinforced when employers turned to the factory system as a more effective disciplinary mode. This article argues that such a thesis misreads history and is essentially ideological.

The Labor of Older Americans: Retirement of Men On and Off the Job, 1870–1937

Abstract: Labor force participation rates for American men sixty and over are estimated for the period 1870 through 1937. They suggest a higher frequency of retirement and quite different trends in the incidence of retirement than have usually been supposed. Evidence is also presented to establish that many older industrial workers changed to less renumerative and less demanding occupations late in their working life. This “on-the-job retirement” may have made the transition from employment to full retirement less sudden than today.

Banks, Kinship, and Economic Development: The New England Case

Abstract: Early banks in New England functioned not as commercial banks in the modern sense but as the financial arms of extended kinship networks. These groups used banks to raise capital for their diversified enterprises and give their operations a stable institutional base. Because entry into banking was essentially free, favoritism in credit markets—the usual affliction of such a system—seems to have been unimportant. Instead, the economy as a whole benefited from the ease with which capital could be mobilized for industrial development.

New evidence on the causes of slave and crew mortality in the Atlantic slave trade.

Abstract: The journals of slave ship surgeons of the 1790s are used to address questions on the relative importance of African conditions versus those on ships crowding the effectiveness of Dolbens Act and the interaction between slave and crew health. In contrast with previous work we find that most slaves who died did so near the middle of the voyage. Crowding was important to health and mortality but the restrictions of Dolbens Act did little to reduce losses. The crew was largely isolated from patterns of disease among slaves. (EXCERPT)

Repudiations and Confiscations by the Medieval State

Abstract: Loan repudiations and property confiscations were common between medieval kings and individuals. Traditional accounts of these confiscations focus on factors affecting the kings, ignoring the motivations of the victims. This deficiency may be remedied by considering the problems faced on both sides of any agreement between a king and a group of citizens. A model is presented which explains the timing and the form of repudiations and confiscations without resorting to an assumption of irrationality by either party. It is general enough to address a persistent problem in the property rights view of government: How can an individual protect himself from abuses by his protector?

Biased Technical Change, Scale, and Factor Substitution in American Industry, 1850–1919

Abstract: Biased technical change, scale economies, and factor substitution were part of U.S. manufacturing's technical response to factor price movements during the period 1850 to 1919. In this article we employ the cost dual of a Generalized Leontief production function to test directly for the presence of these three effects for nineteen two-digit manufacturing sectors. Biased technical change is found in all but one sector; scale economies in all but two; factor substitutability, in all but five. Estimates of scale and bias effects for labor, capital, and materials are presented by sector, and the results are compared with other recent work. ONE of the enduring issues of economic history is the growth of modern manufacturing in the United States between the Civil War and the First World War. In an earlier study we argued that biased technical change was a key feature of this growth, that it was widespread within American manufacturing, and that it accounted for a significant part of the movement of factor shares.' This conclusion is consistent with the modern literature on technical change and its contribution to American economic growth, a literature nurtured by Erwin Rothbarth and H. J. Habakkuk in the labor-scarcity thesis.2 The key to analyzing the rapidity of technical change is the rate of change of relative factor prices. In the last half of the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth centuries American industry faced changes in the relative factor prices which were particularly pronounced and associated with

New Estimates of Prewar Gross National Product and Unemployment

Abstract: The paper examines in detail revised estimates of unemployment and gross national product for the United States before 1929. It first discusses the nature of the revisions to each series and contrasts the assumptions underlying the new data with those underlying the Kuznets GNP series and the Lebergott unemployment rate series. It then examines the business cycle properties of the new prewar estimates. In analyzes the volatility and serial correlation properities of the new macroeconomic series and investigates the Okun's Law relationship between unemployment and GNP, concluding with an evaluation of the assumptions underlying the old and new data.

An Economic Model of Voting Behaviour over Specific Issues at the Constitutional Convention of 1787

Abstract: Despite hundreds of studies of the influence of economic interests on the formation of the U.S. Constitution, no consensus has been reached. Our study of the Constitutional Convention differs from previous ones by offering an explicit theoretical model of delegates' voting behavior and employing multivariate statistical techniques. We extend our earlier work by analyzing new information on constituents' economic interests and ideology. Further our econometric results on individual roll-call votes strongly suggest delegates who owned slaves or represented slaveowning constituents were more likely to oppose issues favoring a national form of government.

Slavery and Emancipation in Comparative Perspective: A Look at Some Recent Debates

Abstract: This paper examines several recent arguments about the role of slavery in the settling of the New World, the viability of slavery as an economic institution in the nineteenth century, and the causes and consequences of slave emancipation in the Americas. Comparisons are made between the analysis of slavery and that of other labor institutions, such as serfdom and free labor.

The Political Economy of Segregation: The Case of Segregated Streetcars

Abstract: The introduction of segregation laws for municipal streetcars is examined. The economics of private and public segregation is analyzed first, taking note of the particular features of the streetcar industry, followed by a discussion of the contemporary debates on streetcar segregation laws in a number of southern cities. The evidence presented suggests that segregation laws were binding constraints and not simply the codification of customary practice. Furthermore, the streetcar companies were not the initiators of segregation and sometimes actively resisted it. These findings are related to several major interpretations of the origins of segregation.

English Open Fields and Enclosures: Retardation or Productivity Improvements

Abstract: This paper is concerned with the relative efficiency of farming in open fields or enclosures in England It uses surveys covering the acreage, yield, and output of the principal grain crops for the period 1795–1801, initially concentrating in some detail on selected but widely distributed English counties before concluding with a section which summarizes the data for England Efficiency meant improvements in per unit acre yields and in total parish output But it also had important implications for total agricultural productivity because the land which was saved by improved farming in enclosures was used to promote a better balance between arable and animal farming

The Impact of the Irish on British Labor Markets During the Industrial Revolution

Abstract: The Irish immigrations during the First Industrial Revolution serve to complicate any assessment of Britain's economic performance up to the 1850s. This paper estimates the size of the Irish immigrations and explores its impact on real wages, rural-urban migration, and industrialization. Using a general equilibrium model, the paper finds that the Irish did not play a significant role in accounting for rising inequality, lagging real wages, or rapid industrialization.

Fiscal News and Inflationary Expectations in Germany after World War I

Abstract: Inflation in Germany from 1919 to 1923 resulted from the accumulation and the anticipation of government deficits. Inflationary expectations depended therefore on fiscal news. Allied demands for reparations, the occupation of the Ruhr, and domestic revolts were important negative news and led to increased inflation. Tax reforms and eventually the end to government deficits were important positive news and ushered in periods of price stability. Political events were fiscal news as they changed the chances for the government to balance the budget.

Craft Labor and Mechanization in Nineteenth-Century American Canning

Abstract: The development of new machinery in nineteenth-century American canning followed two paths. Automative, labor-saving devices were developed to replace labor in unskilled tasks while deskilling, human-capital-saving machinery was designed to make craft labor more replaceable. Cannery operators appear to have focused on deskilling machinery as the key to greater managerial control over production. Craft workers through organizational power and pressing for higher wages seem to have stimulated the early and sustained search for deskilling machinery. Because human-capital-saving machinery allowed wage cuts, they could be adopted prior to their being used as labor-saving devices.

The Earnings of Skilled and Unskilled Immigrants at the End of the Nineteenth Century

Abstract: Most historical studies of immigration in nineteenth-century America have failed to distinguish among the labor-market experiences of different immigrant groups. Using a sample of some 4000 wage earners from turn-of-the-century Iowa, we examine the relative earnings of skilled and unskilled immigrants and suggest the factors which contributed to their very different post-immigration experiences. The results indicate that prior knowledge of a trade conferred upon immigrants an initial earnings advantage, but that unskilled immigrants managed subsequently to close some but not all of the gap by reaping greater returns to experience on the job.

Firm Size and Industrial Structure in the United States During the Nineteenth Century

Abstract: This paper investigates the impact of the emergence of large-scale enterprises on industrial structure in America in the mid-nineteenth century and concludes that their impact was ambiguous. In cottons and irons, average scale increased dramatically, but inequality in the size distribution of plants declined and economic concentration showed no clear trend. In other industries, changes in average scale were much smaller and inequality increased, but again there was no clear trend in concentration. These results are explained by the remarkable persistence of small plants in most industries and I argue that explaining this phenomenon is crucial to understanding industrialization. THE traditional historiography of nineteenth-century American industrialization emphasizes the small scale of antebellum manufacturing establishments and the subsequent emergence of big business.1 The usual explanation for this is that before the Civil War high transport costs were not offset by large-scale production economies so that plants remained small and served local markets. After the war, however, Alfred Chandler has argued that "new methods of transportation and communication, by permitting a large and steady flow of raw materials into and finished products out of a factory, made possible unprecedented levels of production. The realization of this potential required, however, the invention of new machinery and processes."2 Marx also reached similar conclusions.3 These forces led in turn to sharp increases in optimal plant size because they gave large plants substantial cost advantages over smaller ones.

The Reliability of Historical Macroeconomic Data for Comparing Cyclical Stability

Abstract: The question at issue is whether estimates of GNP and unemployment before 1930 exaggerate cyclical volatility enough to produce a false impression of increasing economic stability over the twentieth century. Based on research to be reported in detail at a later date, the answer is no. The range of possible exaggerations is small relative to the observed change.

Standard of Living in Japan Before Industrialization: From What Level Did Japan Begin? A Comment

Abstract: Until recently, Japan was assumed to have started its industrialization from a very low economic level, yet to have achieved modern economic growth in the succeeding one hundred years. ' Of course, it is true that the cultural and educational level in Japan was higher than that in other less-developed countries. Technological transfer in the Meiji Period was facilitated by this high degree of cultural, social, and technical expertise. Yet the economic level itself is supposed to have been near subsistence, resulting in frequent famines and harsh methods of family control such as infanticide and abortion. In the last ten or twenty years this view has been increasingly challenged by historians in Japan and abroad. First, a number of historians found that there was substantial economic development during the Tokugawa Period, which raised the standard of living above the subsistence level. Some have gone even further, insisting that in the nineteenth century the standard of living was higher in Japan than in England. This paper surveys these writings and puts them into historical and international perspective. There is little doubt that there was development in agriculture in the latter half of the Tokugawa Period. Table 1 shows that there were substantial increases in the yield of rice in the period. In the advanced central region of Kinai (cols. 1-3), there appear to have been increases in yield up to the 1830s and stagnation in the succeeding decades. In the more backward peripheral regions (cols. 4 and 5), the increases appear to have continued into the last decades of the Tokugawa Period. Descriptive evidence on technical change supports the hypothesis of increasing yield. Deeper plowing spread; the input of fertilizer, particularly purchased fertilizer, became more common; and insecticide oil started to be used. While some of the data mentioned in Table 1 (cols. 1, 2, and 3) refer to rich farmers whose yields were undoubtedly higher than the average yield, the average yield must also have increased in a parallel way. Moreover, in this period there was a great increase in the production of cash crops such as cotton, rape seeds, indigo, and silk in various parts of Japan. Since there is little evidence to show that feudal dues increased after the middle of the Tokugawa Period, and considering that the population was more or less constant, the average net income of the peasants must have increased over time. A similar conclusion can be drawn from the trend of real wages of workers. Table 2 shows the real wages of various kinds of workers (in terms of rice). On the one hand, real wages in the central regions (cols. 1, 2, and 4) increased until 1800-1830 and stagnated or decreased somewhat thereafter. On the other hand, real wages in the periphery (cols. 3 and 5) continued to increase even after 1830, catching up to the higher levels in the center.

Redemptioner Immigration to Pennsylvania: Evidence on Contract Choice and Profitability

Abstract: The evolution from indentured to redemptioner servitude as a means of financing immigration to late eighteenth-century Pennsylvania is documented. The compensating differences between methods are used to explain contract choice. The rate of return to shipping redemptioners is estimated and compared with the default rate needed to make it a competitive return. The expected incidence of defaults and the implications for risk pooling among families and risk spreading across voyages are investigated.

Prices and Wages in Maryland, 1750–1850

Abstract: This article presents an analysis of empirical research on the course of agricultural prices and wages in Maryland over the century 1750 to 1850. An attempt has been made to present the data in a form comparable to other studies for other regions. In addition to the long-term movement of price and wage series the paper focuses on the use of these data to draw inferences on changes in the standard of living and productivity growth.

Race educational attainment and the 1940 census

Abstract: Decreases in the racial schooling gap have been shown to account for one-third of the increase in the black-white income ratio from 1930 to 1970 [in the United States]. But the usual measure of the gap based on census educational attainment data is flawed. Data on school enrollment rates and months of school attended reveal that schooling levels of blacks born in the late nineteenth century were far lower than census data indicate. With the corrections proposed the narrowing of the racial schooling gap explains two-thirds of the rise in the black-white income ratio from 1930 to 1970. (EXCERPT)

The cotton harvester in retrospect: labor displacement or replacement?

Abstract: The prevailing view of new mechanical technology is that it has, in large part, pushed labor out of agriculture. An alternative hypothesis is that labor has been pulled out of agriculture by higher wages in nonfarm occupations. The mechanical cotton harvester is used to test the two hypotheses. Estimation of a simultaneous-equation model of the labor market for cotton pickers reveals 79 percent of reduction in hand picking of cotton was due to increased nonfarm wages—the pull effect; the remaining 21 percent is attributed to the decreased cost of machine harvesting—the push effect.

Did Coal Miners “Owe Their Souls to the Company Store”? Theory and Evidence from the Early 1900s

Abstract: Although coal companies may have tried to exploit a local-store monopoly, company-store prices in nonunion areas were appreciably limited by competition from other stores and mines in the same labor market. Company stores persisted in part by lowering transactions costs. Prices at company stores were generally similar to those at nearby independent stores, and higher wages may have compensated for higher store prices at isolated mines. Conditions varied, however, with labor-market tightness. Miners were generally not in debt to the store, nor paid entirely in scrip. Scrip was an advance on payday, when miners received cash.

Taxes and Agrarian Life in Early Modern France: Land Sales, 1550–1730

Abstract: Between 1550 and 1730, privileged investors in France--nobles, officers, and wealthy merchants--bought up enormous quantities of land from peasants. The transfer of property has attracted considerable attention from historians, but it has never been satisfactorily explained. The paper invokes the tax exemptions the privileged enjoyed to account for the transfer--an explanation that fits both the chronology of the land sales and the identity of the purchasers. The paper then examines how the tax system throttled growth in the agricultural sector.

The North American Fur Trade: Bargaining to a Joint Profit Maximum under Incomplete Information, 1804–1821

Abstract: We examine bargaining between the Northwest Company and the Hudson's Bay Company using recent models of bargaining under incomplete information. Two previously undisturbed bodies of correspondence are analyzed: letters between the two companies and letters between the Hudson's Bay Company and its London committee. Through merger the companies achieved a joint maximum, but the lengthy and costly bargaining process dissipated much of the potential gain through depletion of animal stocks. Achievement of a joint maximum was hindered by incomplete information, commitment to a strategy which led to bargaining breakdowns, delineation of each party's rights under law, and environmental changes.