IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/186.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A Quarterly Model of the Labour Market in Interwar Britain

Author

Listed:
  • Hatton, Timothy J.

Abstract

The paper analyses the determinants of interwar unemployment using a previously unexploited quarterly data set for 1924-39. Individual equations for insured employment, insured unemployment and the nominal wage rate are estimated and tested. The results indicate that the real wage was an important determinant of employment but not of the labor force, where demographic variables and the effects of the insurance system dominate. The model of wage setting encompasses several different hypotheses concerning the operation of the labor market. Three special cases with widely differing implications for labor market adjustment are each found to be consistent with the data. The data used in this study do not allow us to distinguish between interpretations which emphasize structural unemployment, wage rigidity or benefit-induced unemployment: this helps explain why such divergent views have been maintained.

Suggested Citation

  • Hatton, Timothy J., 1987. "A Quarterly Model of the Labour Market in Interwar Britain," CEPR Discussion Papers 186, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:186
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=186
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Jason Lennard, 2023. "Sticky wages and the Great Depression: evidence from the United Kingdom," European Review of Economic History, European Historical Economics Society, vol. 27(2), pages 196-222.
    2. Eichengreen, Barry & Hatton, Tim, 1988. "Interwar Unemployment in International Perspective," Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, Working Paper Series qt7bw188gk, Institute of Industrial Relations, UC Berkeley.
    3. Luzardo-Luna, Ivan, 2020. "Labour frictions in interwar Britain: industrial reshuffling and the origin of mass unemployment," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 105707, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    4. Barry Eichengreen & Olivier Jeanne, 2000. "Currency Crisis and Unemployment: Sterling in 1931," NBER Chapters, in: Currency Crises, pages 7-43, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Timothy J. Hatton & Mark Thomas, 2010. "Labour markets in the interwar period and economic recovery in the UK and the USA," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 26(3), pages 463-485, Autumn.
    6. Gunnar Bårdsen & Jurgen Doornik & Jan Tore Klovland, 2004. "A European-type wage equation from an American-style labor market: Evidence from a panel of Norwegian manufacturing industries in the 1930s," Working Paper 2004/8, Norges Bank.
    7. Torberg Falch, 2001. "Decentralized Public Sector Wage Determination: Wage Curve and Wage Comparison for Norwegian Teachers in the Pre‐WW2 Period," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 15(3), pages 343-369, September.
    8. Gunnar Bårdsen & Jurgen A. Doornik & Jan Tore Klovland, 2010. "Wage Formation and Bargaining Power during the Great Depression," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 112(1), pages 211-233, March.
    9. Gunnar Bårdsen & Jurgen Doornik & Jan Tore Klovland, 2000. "A Wage Curve for the Interwar Labour Market: Evidence from a Panel of Norwegian Manufacturing Industries," Working Paper Series 1802, Department of Economics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, revised 15 Apr 2001.
    10. W D A Bryant, 2009. "General Equilibrium:Theory and Evidence," World Scientific Books, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., number 6875, August.
    11. Tony Syme, 2000. "Public Policy and Unemployment in Interwar France: An Empirical Approach," Economics Series Working Papers 55, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    12. Paul Oslington, 2012. "General Equilibrium: Theory and Evidence," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 88(282), pages 446-448, September.

    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:cpr:ceprdp:186. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    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.