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Integrated and Segmented Labor Markets: Thinking in Two Sectors

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Timothy J. Hatton
Affiliation:
Senior Lecturer at the University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester C043SQ, England
Jeffrey G. Williamson
Affiliation:
The Laird Bell Professor of Economics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138

Abstract

The broblem with recent historical debates over the segmentation and intergration of labor markets iis that they typically fail to sort out disequlibrium demand shocks from equlibrating migrant-supply responses. This article does so, by exploring the determinants of wage gaps between farm and city for eight countries over the century following 1860.

Type
Papers Presented at the Fiftieth Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1991

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References

A longer version of this paper, including a data appendix, is available upon request from Professor Williamson.Google Scholar

1 For recent studies relating to Britain and the United States, see Williamson, Jeffrey G., “Did English Factor Markets Fail During the Industrial Revolution?”.Oxford Economic Papers, 39 (12 1987), pp. 138,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Coping with City Growth During the British Industrial Revolution (Cambridge, 1990), chap. 7;Google ScholarHunt, E. H., “Industrialization and Regional Inequality: Wages in Britain, 1760–1914,” this Journal, 46 (12 1986), pp. 935–66;Google ScholarRothenberg, Winifred B., “The Emergence of Farm Labor Markets and the Transformation of the Rural Economy: Massachusetts, 1750–1855,” this Journal, 48 (09 1988), pp. 537–66;Google Scholar and Rosenbloom, Joshua L., “One Market or Many? Labor Market Integration in the Late Nineteenth-Century United States,” this Journal, 50 (03 1990), pp. 85107.Google Scholar

2 An Economic Justification of Protectionism,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 72 (11 1958), pp. 496514.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Bellerby, J. R., Agriculture and Industry Relative Income (London, 1956).Google Scholar

4 Hunt, “Industrialization and Regional Inequality”; and Rosenbloom, “One Market or Many?”Google Scholar

5 Aiston, Lee J. and Hatton, Timothy J., “The Wage Gap Between Farm and Factory: Labor Market Integration in the Interwar Years” (Paper presented to the American Economic Association, 12 2830, 1988);Google Scholarand Hatton, and Williamson, , “Wage Gaps Between Farm and City: Michigan in the 1890s” (HIER Discussion Paper No. 1449, Harvard University, 09 1989).Google Scholar

6 Hatton, Timothy J. and Williamson, Jeffrey G., “What Explains Wage Gaps Between Farm and City? Exploring the Todaro Model with American Evidence. 1890–1941,” Economic Development and Cultural Change (forthcoming).Google Scholar

7 The simpsle Dickey-Fuller test gave similar results and is therefore not reported.Google Scholar

8 See Hall, S. G., “An Application of the Granger and Engle Two Step Estimation Procedure to United Kingdom Aggregate Wage Data,” Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 48 (1986), pp. 229–39;CrossRefGoogle Scholarand Jenkinson, T. J., “Testing Neo-Classical Theories of Labour Demand: An Application of Cointegration Techniques,” Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 48 (1986), pp. 241–51.CrossRefGoogle ScholarFor an application in a historical context, see Goldin, Claudia and Margo, Robert A., “Wages, Prices and Labor Markets before the Civil War” (NBER Working Paper No. 3198, National Bureau of Economic Research, 1989).Google ScholarIn an interregional context, the issues of the present paper are also being pursued on late nineteenth-century Britain: see Boyer, George R. and Hatton, Timothy J., “Regional Labor Market Integration in Britain, 1850–1914” (Paper given at the McGill Conference on Labor History, Montreal, Feb. 1991).Google Scholar

9 Hatton and Williamson, “What Explains Wage Gaps.”Google Scholar

10 Todaro, Michael P., “A Model of Labor Migration and Urban Unemployment in Less Developed Countries,” American Economic Review, 59 (03 1969), pp. 138–48.Google Scholar

11 Hatton, Timothy J. and Williamson, Jeffrey G., “World Labor Market Integration and Disintegration over the Past Century” (Research proposal submitted to the NSF. Aug. 1990).Google Scholar