IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/jechis/v32y1972i03p670-681_07.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Factor Substitution and Labor Productivity Growth in American Manufacturing, 1839–1899

Author

Listed:
  • Uselding, Paul J.

Abstract

The work of H. J. Habakkuk, Peter Temin, Robert Fogel, and Nathan Rosenberg on the effect of relative factor price differentials between America and England in the nineteenth century on the course of technological development has generated considerable interest in providing some empirical evidence on the labor scarcity hypothesis. Briefly stated, the hypothesis claims that relatively higher wages in America brought about the invention and use in production of a relatively capital intensive technology, and since “technical possibilities were richest at the capital intensive end of the spectrum,” this phenomenon was somehow responsible for the unique characteristics of American technology, that is, interchangeable parts, certain machine tool developments, and the proliferation of self-acting mechanisms.

Suggested Citation

  • Uselding, Paul J., 1972. "Factor Substitution and Labor Productivity Growth in American Manufacturing, 1839–1899," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 32(3), pages 670-681, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:jechis:v:32:y:1972:i:03:p:670-681_07
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0022050700077172/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Geran Tian & Weixing Wu, 2022. "Employment protection, production flexibility and corporate capital spending," Australian Economic Papers, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 61(1), pages 1-23, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:jechis:v:32:y:1972:i:03:p:670-681_07. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/jeh .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.