IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp12379.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Labor Productivity during the Great Depression in UK Manufacturing

Author

Listed:
  • Hart, Robert A.

    (University of Stirling)

Abstract

This paper provides estimates of labor productivity for one-third of UK manufacturing during the Great Depression. It covers engineering and allied industries, and metal working industries. A unique data set of actual hours of work is combined with comparable real output and employment statistics. It establishes that output per worker-hour was countercyclical in the 1929-1932 peak-to-trough years of the Depression. This result has also been found for US manufacturing over the same period. Working time is found to play a crucial role the UK productivity response. Countercyclical productivity is discussed in terms of (i) the strong final output and consumer price deflations of 1929 to 1934, (ii) an absence of significant labor hoarding, and (c) diminishing returns to long weekly hours of work.

Suggested Citation

  • Hart, Robert A., 2019. "Labor Productivity during the Great Depression in UK Manufacturing," IZA Discussion Papers 12379, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12379
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp12379.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. Collewet, Marion & Sauermann, Jan, 2017. "Working hours and productivity," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 96-106.
    3. Robert A. Hart & J. Elizabeth Roberts, 2013. "Real wage cyclicality and the Great Depression: evidence from British engineering and metal working firms," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 65(2), pages 197-218, April.
    4. repec:bla:econom:v:66:y:1999:i:264:p:533-50 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Eric Wigham, 1973. "The Power to Manage," Palgrave Macmillan Books, Palgrave Macmillan, number 978-1-349-01264-0, October.
    6. Bordo, Michael D. & Evans, Charles L., 1995. "Labor productivity during the Great Depression," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 41-45, January.
    7. M. S. Feldstein, 1967. "Specification of the Labour Input in the Aggregate Production Function," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 34(4), pages 375-386.
    8. Barnett, Alina & Batten, Sandra & Chiu, Adrian & Franklin, Jeremy & Sebastia-Barriel, Maria, 2014. "The UK productivity puzzle," Bank of England Quarterly Bulletin, Bank of England, vol. 54(2), pages 114-128.
    9. John Pencavel, 2015. "The Productivity of Working Hours," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 125(589), pages 2052-2076, December.
    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. Robert A Hart, 2022. "Labour productivity during the Great Depression and the Great Recession in UK engineering and metal manufacture [The Productivity Puzzle: a Firm-level Investigation into Employment Behaviour and Re," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 74(2), pages 431-452.

    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. Robert A Hart, 2022. "Labour productivity during the Great Depression and the Great Recession in UK engineering and metal manufacture [The Productivity Puzzle: a Firm-level Investigation into Employment Behaviour and Re," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 74(2), pages 431-452.
    2. Dora Gicheva, 2020. "Occupational Social Value and Returns to Long Hours," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 87(347), pages 682-712, July.
    3. Edoardo Beretta & Aurelio F. Bariviera & Marco Desogus & Costanza Naguib & Sergio Rossi, 2024. "Productivity and Keynes’s 15-Hour Work Week Prediction for 2030: An Alternative, Macroeconomic Analysis for the United States," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 17(7), pages 1-30, July.
    4. Pedro S. Amaral & James MacGee, 2009. "Re-Examining the Role of Sticky Wages in the U.S. Great Contraction: A Multisectoral Approach," Working Papers (Old Series) 0911, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
    5. Weder, Mark, 2001. "The Great Demand Depression," CEPR Discussion Papers 3067, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    6. Maya Eden, 2021. "Time‐Inseparable Labor Productivity and the Workweek," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 123(3), pages 940-965, July.
    7. Asai, Kentaro & Lopes, Marta C. & Tondini, Alessandro, 2024. "Firm-Level Effects of Reductions in Working Hours," CEPREMAP Working Papers (Docweb) 2405, CEPREMAP.
    8. Françoise Delmez & Vincent Vandenberghe, 2017. "Working long hours: less productive but less costly? Firm-level evidence from Belgium," LIDAM Discussion Papers IRES 2017022, Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES).
    9. Collewet, Marion & Sauermann, Jan, 2017. "Working hours and productivity," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 96-106.
    10. Hart, Robert A. & Roberts, J. Elizabeth, 2013. "Industrial Composition, Methods of Compensation and Real Earnings in the Great Depression," National Institute Economic Review, National Institute of Economic and Social Research, vol. 226, pages 17-29, November.
    11. James C. MacGee & Pedro S. Amaral, 2010. "A Multi-sectoral Approach to the U.S. Great Depression," 2010 Meeting Papers 1242, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    12. Deniz Okat & Ellapulli V. Vasudevan, 2023. "Going the Extra Mile: What Taxi Rides Tell Us About the Long-Hour Culture in Finance," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(7), pages 4228-4239, July.
    13. Sum Lo Simon Ming, 2023. "Desired work-leisure balance in a partial equilibrium job search model with multiple job holding," IZA Journal of Labor Economics, Sciendo & Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 12(1), pages 1-43, December.
    14. Marta C.Lopes & Alessandro Tondini, 2022. "Firm-Level Effects of Reductions in Working Hours," FBK-IRVAPP Working Papers 2022-05, Research Institute for the Evaluation of Public Policies (IRVAPP), Bruno Kessler Foundation.
    15. Mark Weder, 2006. "A heliocentric journey into Germany's Great Depression," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 58(2), pages 288-316, April.
    16. Robert A. Margo, 1993. "Employment and Unemployment in the 1930s," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 7(2), pages 41-59, Spring.
    17. Andrés Rodríguez-Pose & Roberto Ganau, 2022. "Institutions and the productivity challenge for European regions," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 22(1), pages 1-25.
    18. Piotr Ciżkowicz & Andrzej Rzońca & Andrzej Torój, 2019. "In Search of an Appropriate Lower Bound. The Zero Lower Bound vs. the Positive Lower Bound under Discretion and Commitment," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 20(4), pages 1028-1053, November.
    19. Hart, Robert A & Roberts, J Elizabeth, 2013. "The rise and fall of piecework-timework wage differentials: market volatility, labor heterogeneity, and output pricing," Stirling Economics Discussion Papers 2013-12, University of Stirling, Division of Economics.
    20. Patrick Artus & François Lecointe, 1993. "Quelle est la configuration des cycles aux États-Unis ? Une modélisation dynamique traditionnelle," Économie et Prévision, Programme National Persée, vol. 107(1), pages 1-14.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    labor productivity; Great Depression; diminishing returns to hours;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O47 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Empirical Studies of Economic Growth; Aggregate Productivity; Cross-Country Output Convergence
    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • N64 - Economic History - - Manufacturing and Construction - - - Europe: 1913-

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:iza:izadps:dp12379. 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: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.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.