IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/gla/glaewp/2002_7.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Wages, Productivity and Work Intensity in the Great Depression

Author

Listed:
  • Julia Darby
  • Robert A Hart

Abstract

We show that U.S. manufacturing wages during the Great Depression were importantly determined by forces on firms' intensive margins. Short-run changes in work intensity and the longer-term goal of restoring full potential productivity combined to influence real wage growth. By contrast, the external effects of unemployment and replacement rates had much less impact. Empirical work is undertaken against the background of an efficient bargaining model that embraces employment, hours of work and work intensity.

Suggested Citation

  • Julia Darby & Robert A Hart, "undated". "Wages, Productivity and Work Intensity in the Great Depression," Working Papers 2002_7, Business School - Economics, University of Glasgow, revised Jul 2002.
    • Handle: RePEc:gla:glaewp:2002_7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.gla.ac.uk/media/media_22252_en.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fair, Ray C, 1985. "Excess Labor and the Business Cycle," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(1), pages 239-245, March.
    2. Darby, Michael R, 1976. "Three-and-a-Half Million U.S. Employees Have Been Mislaid: Or, an Explanation of Unemployment, 1934-1941," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 84(1), pages 1-16, February.
    3. Svejnar, Jan, 1986. "Bargaining Power, Fear of Disagreement, and Wage Settlements: Theory and Evidence from U.S. Industry," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 54(5), pages 1055-1078, September.
    4. M. M. Bober, 1937. "The Economics of the Iron and Steel Industry," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 52(1), pages 179-185.
    5. Gary Solon & Robert Barsky & Jonathan A. Parker, 1994. "Measuring the Cyclicality of Real Wages: How Important is Composition Bias?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(1), pages 1-25.
    6. Ben S. Bernanke & Kevin Carey, 1996. "Nominal Wage Stickiness and Aggregate Supply in the Great Depression," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 111(3), pages 853-883.
    7. Johnson, George E, 1990. "Work Rules, Featherbedding, and Pareto-optimal Union-Management Bargaining," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 8(1), pages 237-259, January.
    8. Bernanke, Ben S & Parkinson, Martin L, 1991. "Procyclical Labor Productivity and Competing Theories of the Business Cycle: Some Evidence from Interwar U.S. Manufacturing Industries," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 99(3), pages 439-459, June.
    9. Hendry, David F & Doornik, Jurgen A, 1994. "Modelling Linear Dynamic Econometric Systems," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 41(1), pages 1-33, February.
    10. Douglas Staiger & James H. Stock & Mark W. Watson, 1997. "The NAIRU, Unemployment and Monetary Policy," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 11(1), pages 33-49, Winter.
    11. Darby, Julia & Hart, Robert A. & Vecchi, Michela, 2001. "Wages, work intensity and unemployment in Japan, UK and USA," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(2), pages 243-258, May.
    12. Harold L. Cole & Lee E. Ohanian, 1999. "The Great Depression in the United States from a neoclassical perspective," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, vol. 23(Win), pages 2-24.
    13. Bernanke, Ben S, 1986. "Employment, Hours, and Earnings in the Depression: An Analysis of EightManufacturing Industries," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(1), pages 82-109, March.
    14. Hart,Robert A. & Moutos,Thomas, 2008. "Human Capital, Employment and Bargaining," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521061032, September.
    15. Lee E. Ohanian, 2002. "Why did productivity fall so much during the Great Depression?," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, vol. 26(Spr).
    16. Anthony Patrick O'Brien, 1989. "A Behavioral Explanation for Nominal Wage Rigidity During the Great Depression," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 104(4), pages 719-735.
    17. Jeffrey C. Fuhrer, 1995. "The Phillips curve is alive and well," New England Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, issue Mar, pages 41-56.
    18. Walter Y. Oi, 1962. "Labor as a Quasi-Fixed Factor," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 70(6), pages 538-538.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Lyuboslav Kostov, 2020. "The impact of labor productivity on wages in the EU," Economic Thought journal, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences - Economic Research Institute, issue 3, pages 146-158.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Harold L. Cole & Lee E. Ohanian & Ron Leung, 2005. "Deflation and the International Great Depression: A Productivity Puzzle," NBER Working Papers 11237, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Harold L. Cole & Lee E. Ohanian, 2001. "Re-Examining the Contributions of Money and Banking Shocks to the US Great Depression," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2000, Volume 15, pages 183-260, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Klein, Alexander & Otsuy, Keisuke, 2013. "Efficiency, Distortions and Factor Utilization during the Interwar Period," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 147, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    4. Alex Klein & Keisuke Otsu, 2013. "Efficiency, Distortions and Factor Utilization during the Interwar Period," Studies in Economics 1317, School of Economics, University of Kent.
    5. Lawrence J. Christiano & Roberto Motto & Massimo Rostagno, 2003. "The Great Depression and the Friedman-Schwartz hypothesis," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, pages 1119-1215.
    6. Molina-Domene, Maria, 2018. "Labor specialization as a source of market frictions," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 91703, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    7. Pedro Amaral & James C. MacGee, 2002. "The Great Depression in Canada and the United States: A Neoclassical Perspective," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 5(1), pages 45-72, January.
    8. Luca Pensieroso, 2007. "Real Business Cycle Models Of The Great Depression: A Critical Survey," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(1), pages 110-142, February.
    9. Gregor W. Smith, 2006. "The spectre of deflation: a review of empirical evidence," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 39(4), pages 1041-1072, November.
    10. Petrosky-Nadeau, Nicolas & Zhang, Lu, 2021. "Unemployment crises," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 335-353.
    11. Harrison, Sharon G. & Weder, Mark, 2006. "Did sunspot forces cause the Great Depression?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(7), pages 1327-1339, October.
    12. Christopher J. Erceg & Michael D. Bordo & Charles L. Evans, 2000. "Money, Sticky Wages, and the Great Depression," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(5), pages 1447-1463, December.
    13. Weder, Mark, 2001. "The Great Demand Depression," CEPR Discussion Papers 3067, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    14. Hart, Robert A., 2008. "Piece work pay and hourly pay over the cycle," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(5), pages 1006-1022, October.
    15. Mark Weder, 2006. "The Role Of Preference Shocks And Capital Utilization In The Great Depression," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 47(4), pages 1247-1268, November.
    16. Robert A. Hart & J Malley (University of Glasgow), 1996. "Labor Productivity and the Cycle," Working Papers 9613, Business School - Economics, University of Glasgow.
    17. Nicolas L. Ziebarth, 2013. "Identifying the Effects of Bank Failures from a Natural Experiment in Mississippi during the Great Depression," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(1), pages 81-101, January.
    18. Hart, Robert A. & Roberts, J. Elizabeth, 2010. "Real Wages, Working Time, and the Great Depression: What Does Micro Evidence Tell Us?," IZA Discussion Papers 4977, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    19. Maria Molina-Domene, 2018. "Labor specialization as a source of market frictions," CEP Discussion Papers dp1580, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    20. repec:dgr:rugggd:gd-108 is not listed on IDEAS
    21. Mazumder, Sandeep, 2011. "Cost-based Phillips Curve forecasts of inflation," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 553-567.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • N62 - Economic History - - Manufacturing and Construction - - - U.S.; Canada: 1913-

    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:gla:glaewp:2002_7. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Business School Research Team (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dpglauk.html .

    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.