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Time and Work in Eighteenth-Century London

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Hans-Joachim Voth
Hans-Joachim Voth
Affiliation:
Consulting Assistant Professor of Economics at Stanford University, Stanford CA 94305–6072.
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Abstract

Witnesses' accounts are used to analyze changes in working hours between 1750 and 1800. Two findings stand out. The article demonstrates that the information contained in witnesses' accounts allows us to reconstruct historical time-budgets and provides extensive tests of the new method. Estimates of annual labor input in 1749/63 and 1799/1803 are presented. It emerges that the number of annual working hours changed rapidly between the middle and the of the eighteenth century. These findings have important implications for the issue of total factor productivity during the Industrial Revolution.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 58 , Issue 1 , March 1998 , pp. 29 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1998

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