Anonymity, efficiency wages and technological progress

• 成果类型: Article; Proceedings Paper
• 署名作者: Broadberry, Stephen; Ghosal, Sayantan; Proto, Eugenio
• 署名单位: University of Oxford; University of Glasgow; University of Warwick; IZA Institute Labor Economics; Leibniz Association; Ifo Institut
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3878
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2016.06.002
• 发表日期: 2017
• 页码: 379-394
• 关键词: Commercialisation; Industrial revolution; anonymity; efficiency wages; learning by doing

摘要

Although the industrial revolution is often characterized as the culmination of a process of commercialisation, the precise nature of such a link remains unclear. This paper provides an analysis of one such link: the role of commercialisation in raising wages as impersonal labour market transactions replace personalized customary relations. In the presence of an aggregate capital externality, we show that the resulting shift in relative factor prices will, under certain conditions, lead to higher capital-intensity in the production technology and hence, a faster rate of technological progress. We provide historical evidence using European data to show that England was among the most urbanized and the highest wage countries at the onset of the industrial revolution. The model highlights the effects of changes in the availability of information, typical of a modernizing country, on efficiency wages and technological progress. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.