Pessimism Preserved: Real Wages in the British Industrial Revolution.

The paper compares Feinstein’s and Clark’s consumer price and real wage indices for the British industrial revolution. The sources for their weights and component price series are evaluated. While some of Clark’s innovations are improvements, many of his changes degrade the price index. A new price...

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Main Author: Allen, R
Format: Working paper
Language:English
Published: Department of Economics (University of Oxford) 2007
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author Allen, R
author_facet Allen, R
author_sort Allen, R
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description The paper compares Feinstein’s and Clark’s consumer price and real wage indices for the British industrial revolution. The sources for their weights and component price series are evaluated. While some of Clark’s innovations are improvements, many of his changes degrade the price index. A new price index is developed using the best components of Clark’s and Feinstein’s. This index is much closer to Feinstein’s than to Clark’s. The implied growth in real wages is also close to Feinstein’s and contradicts Clark’s ‘optimistic’ view of rising working class living standards during the industrial revolution.
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spelling oxford-uuid:1660bc3a-01c9-4560-9054-f2e57d119e502022-03-26T10:31:00ZPessimism Preserved: Real Wages in the British Industrial Revolution.Working paperhttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_8042uuid:1660bc3a-01c9-4560-9054-f2e57d119e50EnglishOxford University Research Archive - ValetDepartment of Economics (University of Oxford)2007Allen, RThe paper compares Feinstein’s and Clark’s consumer price and real wage indices for the British industrial revolution. The sources for their weights and component price series are evaluated. While some of Clark’s innovations are improvements, many of his changes degrade the price index. A new price index is developed using the best components of Clark’s and Feinstein’s. This index is much closer to Feinstein’s than to Clark’s. The implied growth in real wages is also close to Feinstein’s and contradicts Clark’s ‘optimistic’ view of rising working class living standards during the industrial revolution.
spellingShingle Allen, R
Pessimism Preserved: Real Wages in the British Industrial Revolution.
title Pessimism Preserved: Real Wages in the British Industrial Revolution.
title_full Pessimism Preserved: Real Wages in the British Industrial Revolution.
title_fullStr Pessimism Preserved: Real Wages in the British Industrial Revolution.
title_full_unstemmed Pessimism Preserved: Real Wages in the British Industrial Revolution.
title_short Pessimism Preserved: Real Wages in the British Industrial Revolution.
title_sort pessimism preserved real wages in the british industrial revolution
work_keys_str_mv AT allenr pessimismpreservedrealwagesinthebritishindustrialrevolution