Unreal wages? A new empirical foundation for the study of living standards and economic growth in England, 1260-1860
Existing measures of historical real wages suffer from the fundamental problem that workers' annual incomes are estimated on the basis of day wages without knowing the length of the working year. We circumvent this problem by presenting a novel wage series of male workers employed on annual con...
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| Format: | Working paper |
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University of Oxford
2016
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| _version_ | 1797103490351235072 |
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| author | Humphries, J Weisdorf, J |
| author_facet | Humphries, J Weisdorf, J |
| author_sort | Humphries, J |
| collection | OXFORD |
| description | Existing measures of historical real wages suffer from the fundamental problem that workers' annual incomes are estimated on the basis of day wages without knowing the length of the working year. We circumvent this problem by presenting a novel wage series of male workers employed on annual contracts. We use evidence of labour market arbitrage to argue that existing real wage estimates are badly off target, because they overestimate the medieval working year but underestimate the industrial one. Our data suggests that modern economic growth began two centuries earlier than hitherto thought and was driven by an 'Industrious Revolution'. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-07T06:20:52Z |
| format | Working paper |
| id | oxford-uuid:f2ac0a5a-d887-4f41-9878-cea22072fcd4 |
| institution | University of Oxford |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-07T06:20:52Z |
| publishDate | 2016 |
| publisher | University of Oxford |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | oxford-uuid:f2ac0a5a-d887-4f41-9878-cea22072fcd42022-03-27T12:05:44ZUnreal wages? A new empirical foundation for the study of living standards and economic growth in England, 1260-1860Working paperhttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_8042uuid:f2ac0a5a-d887-4f41-9878-cea22072fcd4Symplectic ElementsBulk import via SwordUniversity of Oxford2016Humphries, JWeisdorf, JExisting measures of historical real wages suffer from the fundamental problem that workers' annual incomes are estimated on the basis of day wages without knowing the length of the working year. We circumvent this problem by presenting a novel wage series of male workers employed on annual contracts. We use evidence of labour market arbitrage to argue that existing real wage estimates are badly off target, because they overestimate the medieval working year but underestimate the industrial one. Our data suggests that modern economic growth began two centuries earlier than hitherto thought and was driven by an 'Industrious Revolution'. |
| spellingShingle | Humphries, J Weisdorf, J Unreal wages? A new empirical foundation for the study of living standards and economic growth in England, 1260-1860 |
| title | Unreal wages? A new empirical foundation for the study of living standards and economic growth in England, 1260-1860 |
| title_full | Unreal wages? A new empirical foundation for the study of living standards and economic growth in England, 1260-1860 |
| title_fullStr | Unreal wages? A new empirical foundation for the study of living standards and economic growth in England, 1260-1860 |
| title_full_unstemmed | Unreal wages? A new empirical foundation for the study of living standards and economic growth in England, 1260-1860 |
| title_short | Unreal wages? A new empirical foundation for the study of living standards and economic growth in England, 1260-1860 |
| title_sort | unreal wages a new empirical foundation for the study of living standards and economic growth in england 1260 1860 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT humphriesj unrealwagesanewempiricalfoundationforthestudyoflivingstandardsandeconomicgrowthinengland12601860 AT weisdorfj unrealwagesanewempiricalfoundationforthestudyoflivingstandardsandeconomicgrowthinengland12601860 |