George R. Boyer

The Impact of Emigration on Real Wages in Ireland, 1850-1914

George R. Boyer et al. — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 12:47:25 PST

[Excerpt] The chapter is organized as follows. First, we examine the growth of Irish wages and living standards in comparison with other countries. Second, we examine the hypothesis that the Irish agricultural wage was responsive to movements in the male population. Third, we attempt to estimate the effect of emigration on the population and labor force of Ireland from 1851-1911. In order to estimate the impact of faster labor force growth, we specify a computable general equilibrium model of the Irish economy. Then the effects of emigration are evaluated in a general equilibrium framework. Finally, we summarize the main findings of the chapter in a short conclusion.

Labor Economics

George R. Boyer et al. — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 12:47:20 PST

The authors hypothesize that most labor economists "sooner or later had to incorporate at least the appearance of institutional concerns in their papers to avoid indigestion whenever lunching with colleagues outside the field of economics" They add: "If the new interests of modern labor economics are in fact driven by the imperatives of science, then the institutionalist and the neoclassical approaches may well synthesize".

Regional Labour Market Integration in England and Wales, 1850-1913

George R. Boyer et al. — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 12:47:16 PST

[Excerpt] This chapter examines the integration of labour markets within the rural and urban sectors of England and Wales during the second half of the nineteenth century. Although there is a large literature on internal migration and emigration in Victorian Britain, historians typically have focused on the direction and causes of migration rather than on its consequences for the labour market. Broadly speaking, the literature has found that workers did indeed migrate towards better wage-earning opportunities, that most moves were short-distance moves, and that once certain patterns of migration were established they often persisted. The studies leave the strong impression, if only implicitly, that although there was considerable migration, opportunities for arbitrage were not fully exploited. However, analyses of the pattern and extent of migration movements shed little light on the issue of integration. Markets could be perfectly integrated but exhibit little migration or they could exhibit high rates of migration but be poorly integrated.

A better measure of labour market integration can be obtained by examining wage rates. There is a large literature on the history of wages during the nineteenth century. However, with the exception of Arthur Bowley (1898, 1900a, 1900b, 1901), A. Wilson Fox (1903), and most importantly E.H. Hunt (1973, 1986), historians have not examined the changes over time in local or regional variations in wages within occupations.

This chapter extends the work of Bowley, Fox, and Hunt, by offering several tests for the degree of labour market integration and its trend from 1850 to 1913. We construct annual regional wage series for agricultural labourers and carpenters, and use these new wage series to test for regional wage convergence and to estimate structural models to assess the degree of labour market integration between regions.

The Union Wage Effect in Late Nineteenth Century Britain

Timothy J. Hatton et al. — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 09:37:33 PST

[Excerpt] This paper offers an historical dimension to the impact of trade unions on earnings by estimating the union wage effect in Britain in 1889-90 using data from the US Commissioner of Labor survey conducted at that time. The determinants of union status are also investigated in terms of a probit estimation using individual characteristics which may be correlated with union membership. The results of this first step are used in the computation of selectivity corrected estimates of the union wage effect. It is found that the effect of union membership on earnings at this time was of the order of 15%-20% and that this effect was similar at different skill levels. A broadly similar pattern is observed for industry groups, although the difference in the impact of unions on earnings across industries was greater than across skill groups.

Poor Relief, Informal Assistance, and Short Time During the Lancashire Cotton Famine

George R. Boyer — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 09:37:29 PST

[Excerpt] This paper presents new evidence concerning the importance of poor relief as a source of income assistance for unemployed operatives during the Lancashire cotton famine. My comparison of weekly data on the number of relief recipients in 23 distressed poor law unions with estimates of weekly cotton consumption for the period November 1861 to December 1862 suggests that the average length of time between becoming unemployed and receiving poor relief was less than 2 months. This result is shown to be consistent with available evidence on working class saving. Given the meager amount of informal assistance available to them, most operatives were forced to turn to the poor law for income assistance within 4 to 8 weeks of becoming unemployed.

The Influence of London on Labor Markets in Southern England, 1830-1914

George R. Boyer — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 09:37:26 PST

[Excerpt] Historians have long acknowledged that London, because of its enormous size and rapidly growing demand for labor, acted as a powerful magnet for migrants from throughout southern England. However, while there is a large literature documenting the flow of migrants to London, there have been surprisingly few attempts to determine the consequences of this migration for southern labor markets. This article attempts to redress the imbalance in the literature by examining the influence of London on agricultural labor markets during the nineteenth century. In particular, the article examines the effect of distance from London on wage rates in southern England at various points in time, and the effect of labor market conditions in London on short-run changes in agricultural wage rates. I find that there was a significant London wage effect throughout the nineteenth century and that annual changes in agricultural wage rates were largely driven by London wage and employment rates. The results of the article show that London and the rural South and East of England formed a well-functioning regional labor market throughout the nineteenth century.

Did Joseph Arch Raise Agricultural Wages? A Reply

George R. Boyer et al. — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 09:37:22 PST

[Excerpt] Dunbabin takes issue with us on the question of whether and by how much the agricultural workers' movement led by Joseph Arch raised agricultural wages in the early 1870s. A number of authors have speculated on what the wage effect might have been, but these speculations have rarely been based on more than a cursory examination of agricultural wage data and they have not been able to separate the effects of unionism from other factors influencing wages. Our article was the first to narrow down the range of estimates by making the best use of available data for the whole country. We used two different approaches, cross-section and time series, and in each case we were careful to use alterative specifications to ensure the results were reasonably robust. Our results suggested that unionism raised agricultural wages between 1870 and 1875 by around 3 to 6 per cent on average, a modest but perceptible effect.

In our analysis we relied on statistics for wage rates and union membership which we believe are the best available, including the union membership estimates offered some years ago by Dunbabin. Dunbabin now argues that we have put too much faith in these statistics, including his own, and that our estimates are therefore subject to 'an appreciable margin of error.' It was never our intention to produce a precise and definitive figure for the union wage effect, but rather to identify a plausible range of estimates. Dunbabin does not argue that our estimates are too high or too low and offers no alterative estimate or method of estimating. The key issue therefore is whether the data and models we use are sufficiently well grounded to support the inferences we draw from them or whether, in the absence of any alterative, we should retreat from attempting to make any inference at all. Naturally, we believe the former.

The only way to satisfy Dunbabin's misgivings is to see how far our results are vulnerable to the specific comments he makes. If more data of better quality were available we presume that he would be satisfied since he makes no criticism of the model itself—only of the reliability of the data we use to estimate it. His own statements imply that he believes that agricultural wages were determined by essentially the same forces which are embodied in our model. Our approach then is to see how far our results change if we modify certain variables along the lines he suggests. Most of Dunbabin's criticisms apply to the data we used in our cross-sectional estimates and hence we shall concentrate on these and refer to the time series only in passing.

Migration and Labour Market Integration in Late Nineteenth-Century England and Wales

George R. Boyer — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 09:37:18 PST

[Excerpt] There is a long and well established tradition of studies analysing the pattern and causes of internal migration and assessing the degree of labour market integration in late nineteenth-century Britain. Some studies document the flows of migrants from one area to another and describe migrant characteristics and the directions of the predominant streams of migration. Others analyse the determinants of gross or net migration flows at the region or county level. The questions implicit in these studies are: How mobile was the labour force? What were the major factors which determined individual decisions to migrate? How are these factors reflected in differences in migration flows between regions and in the pattern of long distance and short distance migration? Did labour mobility increase during the nineteenth century?

There is also a strand of the literature which studies the effects of migration and labour mobility on the growth of industries, cities, and regions and above all on wage rates and wage differentials. The questions here are: How far did migration serve to integrate labour markets within and between regions and sectors? Do movements in regional and sectoral wage rates provide evidence of labour market integration? Did the degree of integration increase during the nineteenth century?

In this article we provide a framework within which these questions can be addressed and which links together these two separate strands of the literature. Some of the existing literature is reviewed within this framework, and new evidence offered on the questions raised above. The article is organized as follows. In section I a simple framework is set out which stresses the links between migration and labour market integration. In section II the evidence on the character of migration flows, their magnitude and direction is examined. Section III focuses on the determinants of migration flows at the county level, particularly from rural southern counties. This is followed, in section W, with an examination of the effect of rural-urban migration on agricultural wage rates. Section V considers the evidence on regional labour market integration, and is followed by a brief conclusion summarizing the results.

[Review of the book Labour History and the Labour Movement in Britain]

George R. Boyer — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 10:53:26 PST

[Excerpt] While this volume contains some important pieces, it is uneven in quality, and several of the papers, in my opinion, should have been omitted. Given the very high price of the book, the fact that it omits Pollard's important papers on factory discipline and his chapter from the Cambridge Economic History of Europe, and the ready availability in journals of the best papers, I cannot recommend it to anyone but librarians who happen to have unlimited sources of money. One can only hope that in the future Ashgate or another publisher will reprint, at reasonable prices, Sidney Pollard's excellent monographs, A History of Labour in Sheffield and The Genesis of Modern Management.

[Review of the book The Economics of the Industrial Revolution]

George R. Boyer — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 10:53:25 PST

[Excerpt] This book contains a collection of papers on the causes and impact of the Industrial Revolution in Britain. The authors are, with perhaps one exception, practitioners of the New Economic History, which relies on economic theory and statistical testing of hypotheses. The papers cover three topics: the causes of the Industrial Revolution; the role of agriculture; and the impact of industrialization on the standard of living of British workers.

[Review of the book British Labour History, 1815-1914]

George R. Boyer — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 10:53:23 PST

[Excerpt] One of the most important issues in economic history is the effect of industrialization on workers' living standards and on the development of labor movements and class consciousness. Because Great Britain was the first nation to industrialize, the British workers have been a favorite topic among economic and social historians. Until now, however, there have been no textbooks covering all aspects of British labor history. E. H. Hunt has admirably filled this gap. His book deals with practically every topic of interest concerning British workers from the end of the Napoleonic Wars to the beginning of World War I.

[Review of the book British Unemployment, 1919-1939: A Study in Public Policy]

George R. Boyer — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 10:53:22 PST

[Excerpt] Garside's book fills an important gap in the literature on interwar unemployment by providing a comprehensive account of the various types of public policy that government officials, politicians, businessmen, and union leaders advocated as means for reducing unemployment, and by emphasizing the effect of the changing nature of the unemployment problem on the debates on public policy. The book's one major shortcoming is that it contains very little analysis of the effects of government unemployment policies.

[Review of the book The Idea of Poverty: England in the Early Industrial Age]

George R. Boyer — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 10:53:21 PST

[Excerpt] One must have some knowledge of a society's conception of poverty in order to understand the existence of differing methods of poor relief over time and place. In The Idea of Poverty, Gertrude Himmelfarb presents a detailed account of England's poverty problem during the years 1750 to 1850 as seen by contemporary English economists, politicians, journalists, and novelists. She attempts to determine why the image of poverty, and of the poor, changed over those years and how the popular image of the poor influenced society's methods of relieving poverty. The result is a book that anyone concerned with the problem of poverty, either in current or past times, will find both interesting and useful.

[Review of the book Interwar Unemployment in International Perspective]

George R. Boyer — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 10:53:20 PST

[Excerpt] The book redresses two imbalances in the recent literature on interwar unemployment: its almost exclusive focus on the United States and Britain, and its predominantly macroeconomic nature. To achieve these goals, the editors encouraged the authors of the country studies to address a set of microeconomic issues, including the extent to which the incidence and duration of unemployment varied across economic and demographic groups, and the effect of unemployment on labor force participation and poverty. Two macroeconomic issues also are addressed in several of the papers: the effects of real wages and of unemployment insurance on unemployment. These two issues have been hotly debated in the recent literature on interwar unemployment in the United States and Britain, and their discussion here for other industrialized countries represents a significant addition to the current debate.

[Review of the book The Scottish Poor Law, 1745-1845]

George R. Boyer — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 10:53:19 PST

[Excerpt] While much has been written in the past 20 years concerning the Old Poor Law in England, very little attention has been given to the development of the Scottish Poor Law. This is surprising, given that the Scottish Poor Law differed radically from its English counterpart in its response to the increasing poverty of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. R. A. Cage's descriptive account of the administration of the Poor Law in Scotland from 1745 to 1845 is therefore a welcome addition to the existing literature on the early development of the British social welfare system.

[Review of the book Converging Divergences: Worldwide Changes in Employment Systems]

George R. Boyer — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 10:18:32 PST

[Excerpt] During the past two decades there have been significant changes in employment systems across industrialized countries. Converging Divergences: Worldwide Changes in Employment Systems, by Harry C. Katz and Owen Darbishire, examines changes since 1980 in employment practices in seven industrialized countries—the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, Japan, Sweden, and Italy—with a focus on the automotive and telecommunications industries. Katz and Darbishire find that variations in employment patterns within these countries have been increasing over the past two decades. The increase in variation is not simply a result of a decline in union strength in some sectors of the economy; variation has increased within both union and nonunion sectors. Despite this within-country divergence, Katz and Darbishire find that employment systems across countries are converging toward four common patterns of work practices: a low-wage employment pattern; the human resource management (HRM) employment pattern; a Japanese-oriented employment pattern; and a joint team-based employment pattern. Significant differences in national employment-related institutions have resulted in some variation across countries in how these work patterns are implemented. Still, Katz and Darbishire find that there are "many commonalities in the employment systems of the seven countries and in the processes through which these commonalities have developed."

Comments on Geraghty, Márquez, and Vizcarra

George R. Boyer — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 10:18:31 PST

Professor Boyer reviews and comments upon the three dissertations that were finalists for the Alexander Gerschenkron Prize in 2002.

[Review of the book Growing Public: Social Spending and Economic Growth Since the Eighteenth Century]

George R. Boyer — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 10:18:30 PST

[Excerpt] Lindert’s discussion of the costs and benefits of the welfare state is only one part, albeit the most eye-catching part, of this wide-ranging work in comparative economic history. Volume 1, written for non-specialists, presents “The Story”; it is tailor-made for upper-level undergraduate courses in economic and social history, public policy, and welfare economics. Volume 2 presents “Further Evidence,” including the regression results that underlie the findings presented in the first volume, and eighty pages of appendices. Graduate students and scholars studying the welfare state will want to read this volume in conjunction with Volume 1. For those who want to probe even deeper, most of the underlying data are available on Lindert’s home website at the University of California, Davis.

[Review of the book Poverty and Welfare in England, 1700-1850: A Regional Perspective]

George R. Boyer — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 10:18:29 PST

[Excerpt] The last decade has seen an upsurge in research by social historians on the English poor laws, largely in the form of local studies. These have greatly increased our knowledge of the demographic makeup of the "pauper host," the generosity of relief benefits, and the ways in which paupers combined poor relief with other forms of income assistance in order to subsist. In this book, Steven King uses "poor law and other documentation" for 60 English communities to extend our understanding of the role played by poor relief from 1700 to 1850. He argues that during this period there was not in fact one national system of poor relief, but two macro-regional patterns: a relatively generous and benevolent system in the south and east, and a stinting and harsh one in the north and west.

The Economic Role of the English Poor Law, 1780-1834

George R. Boyer — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 10:18:28 PST

[Excerpt] Over the 85-year period from 1748/50 to 1832/34, real per capita expenditures on poor relief increased at an average rate of approximately 1 percent per year. There were also important changes in the administration of relief with respect to able-bodied laborers during the period. Policies providing relief outside of workhouses to unemployed and under-employed able-bodied laborers became widespread during the 1770s and 1780s in the grain-producing South and East of England. The so-called Speenhamland system of outdoor relief flourished until 1834, when it was abolished by the Poor Law Amendment Act. The aim of the thesis is to provide an economic explanation for the long-term increase in relief expenditures and for the development and persistence of Speenhamland policies.