Explorations in Economic History最新文献

Romans rewarded skill in material terms, and wage data reflects this. This study develops a method for understanding the return on skilling in the Roman period, starting from internal pay scales observed in Egyptian documents. These data reveal a modal premium of 100 and mean of 74. Roman-period returns on training compare favorably with evidence from outside Egypt, especially detailed pay scales in Diocletian's Price Edict, thus suggesting a broader Empire-wide premium. This Roman skill premium is then compared with a selection of data from other premodern periods, which show that the relative price of skill in ancient Rome was not historically atypical, despite the particularly high levels of enslavement and urbanization characteristic of the Roman economy. The return on investments in training during the Empire can be seen to reflect both numeracy practices and developing market conditions for skill.

This article evaluates the high-profile claim that enslaved African-Americans produced over 50 percent of US national product in the pre-Civil War period. The accounting exercise shows the fraction was closer to (and indeed likely slightly below) the share of the population, that is, about 12.6 percent in 1860. The enslaved population had higher rates of labor force participation, but they were also forced to work in sectors–agriculture and domestic service—with below average output per worker. The economic surplus generated by the enslaved was due chiefly to the low value of the very basic consumption bundle provided rather than to exceptionally high values of production per capita.

What is the role of access to land for the decision to emigrate? We consider the case of Denmark between 1868 and 1908, when a large number of people left for America. We exploit the fact that the Danish agrarian reforms between 1784 and 1807 had differential impacts on the class of landless laborers around the country, and use detailed parish-level data police protocols of emigrants; population censuses and land registers to show that areas with a more unequal distribution of land witnessed greater emigration. We demonstrate a sizable effect: a one standard deviation increase in the Theil index implies an increase in emigration of 18 percent above the mean.

China made phenomenal progress in science and technology during the long twentieth century. However, in the literature, there are contrasting opinions on the role Confucianism played here. To answer the question regarding whether Confucianism served as a stumbling block or a stepping stone, we must first disentangle some of the multifaceted connotations of “Confucianism,” such as its worldviews, learning traditions, and “the teaching of Confucius” in a religious sense. The sectarian division of Confucian learning, particularly Neo-Confucianism and evidential learning, which corresponded to Song learning and revived Han learning in the Qing context, respectively, is given special consideration. We exploit several rare datasets of scientists and engineers for the era of the modern period and contemporary times, as well as data on the first wave of the new-style schools, measures of Neo-Confucianism, and the spatial distribution of prolific evidential scholars. We then show that the accumulation of human capital due to the imperial examination system and evidential scholarship contributed to the rise of modern science in China, whereas Confucian values as represented by various Neo-Confucian measures did not.

The growth of public transport networks in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries had profound effects on commuting in the industrialized world, yet the consequences for labor markets during this important period of historical development remains largely unstudied. This paper draws on a unique dataset combining individual commuting and wage information for working-class residents of London, circa 1930, to analyze, for the first time, the nature of and returns to commuting shortly after when networks were first built. A sizeable majority of working-class Londoners worked within a short walk of their residence in 1890. By 1930, over 70 percent commuted at least one kilometer. Commuting allowed workers to search for jobs over a wider geographic area and across a larger number of potential employers. This, in turn, potentially increased workers’ bargaining power and improved employer-employee matching. We show that wage returns to commuting were on the order of 1.5–3.5 percent per kilometer travelled. Access to public transport increased both the probability of commuting and distance commuted but had little or no direct effect on the probability of being employed or on earnings. We argue that these results are consistent with a search and matching framework; commuting led to workers finding jobs more suited to their skills and to better matches with employers. We also provide descriptive evidence from contemporary sources to describe the impact of commuting on improving quality of life by reducing urban crowding.

This paper presents evidence that firms had labor market power during the early 1930s. Using plant-level data from the Census of Manufactures between 1929 and 1935, I construct a Herfindahl-Hirschman Index of local labor market concentration at the State-Economic-Area-by-industry-by-occupation level. I find that local labor market concentration has a negative relationship with wages which is consistent with labor market monopsony power. The results are robust to excluding local labor markets with one firm, excluding industries with local product markets, as well as the inclusion of industry characteristic, SEA, and occupational time trends. I find evidence that New Deal minimum wage policies weakened monopsony power. I also find suggestive evidence that high unemployment rates during 1930 reduced workers’ bargaining power.

This article studies the long-term wage development in China between 1530 and 1840. In the long run, nominal wages moved in tandem with prices, but did not respond as quickly as the increase in prices. Real wages experienced two substantial falls between the 1620s-1650s and the 1740s-1760s, but remained relatively stable in the remainder of the period examined. Rural-urban wage disparities suggest that the agricultural sector, rather than urban industries, continued to absorb surplus labour. A comparison of wages in Lower Yangzi China and England suggests that the wage gap widens after 1700.

This paper analyzes incomes and income inequality in Stockholm from 1870 to 1970. The paper builds on a new dataset of 38,022 randomly sampled Stockholm residents 1870–1950, with information on income, occupation, age, gender, and household composition. This is complemented by the Census of 1930 and a Statistics Sweden sample for 1960 and 1970. Incomes were very unequally distributed between 1870 and 1920, with Gini coefficients of pre-tax income around sixty. After 1920 inequality fell quite steadily. A drop in capital incomes contributed, and when looking at post-tax incomes the growth of progressive taxation after 1930 also contributed, but most of the high inequality up to 1920 and equalization after this date depended on the distribution of labour income. In the early 1900s professional groups had huge income advantages over workers, but this advantage was drastically reduced after 1920 when working-class incomes grew rapidly. An important mechanism of income growth was the upgrading of the jobs structure, highlighting the importance of structural change, beyond the Kuznetsian binary of agriculture–manufacturing, for understanding long-run economic inequality.

This article presents the first complete 19^th-century reconstruction of the Mexican wealth distribution, from independence to the Mexican Revolution. It uses an often underutilized source in Mexican historiography: will inventories/protocols. In addition, the present article estimates the levels and trends of historical wealth inequality using five different methods, among them the application of the properties of two theoretical parametric distributions to the measurement of historical inequality. The dynamics of wealth inequality in 19^th century Mexico were dominated by the top 1% and the middle 40% of the wealth distribution; meanwhile, the top 10% and bottom 50% demonstrate remarkable stability. This article makes significant contributions through two primary avenues: firstly, the reconstruction of historical wealth inequality, and secondly, the analysis of historical developments in the context of their potential impact on the distribution of wealth within a dynamic political economy environment.

N36, D31, I32, H20.

From 1860 to 1913 the six colonies that became states of Australia strove to attract migrants from the UK with a variety of assisted passages. The colonies/states shared a common culture and sought migrants from a common source, the UK, but set policy independently of each other. This experience provides a unique opportunity to examine the formation of assisted immigration policies. Using a panel of colonies/states over the years 1862 to 1913 I investigate the association between measures of policy activism and a range of economic and political variables. Assisted migration policies were positively linked with government budget surpluses and local economic prosperity. They were also associated with political participation including the widening of the franchise and remuneration of members of parliament. While the reduction in travel time to Australia reduced the need for assisted migration, slumps in the UK increased the take-up of assisted passages.