MAN TO LOAN 1500-DOLLAR AND SERVE AS CLERK - TRADING JOBS FOR LOANS IN MID-19TH-CENTURY SAN-FRANCISCO

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: ROGERS, FH
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0507
• DOI: 10.1017/S002205070001398X
• 发表日期: 1994
• 页码: 34-63
• 关键词: labor-market; self-selection; unemployment; equilibrium

摘要

This paper explores the phenomenon of ''job-loan trading''-in which employers offered jobs in exchange for substantial loans from their new employees-as practiced in mid-nineteenth-century California. A sample of newspaper advertisements from 1857-76 reveals that despite the obvious inefficiencies of linking labor and capital markets, job-loan trading was both common and profitable. I assess labor market bonding against moral hazard or adverse selection as a possible explanation, but conclude that the job-loan trades primarily provide evidence of substantial Pacific Coast capital market imperfections. This conclusion has implications for the broader question of how financial markets develop.