Stephenson, Judy;
Wallis, Patrick;
Paker, Meredith;
(2023)
Nominal wage patterns, monopsony, and labour market power in early modern England.
(Economic History Working Papers
356).
LSE Economic History Working Papers: London, UK.
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Abstract
Records of long-eighteenth-century English wage payments exhibit almost absolute nominal wage rigidity over many decades, alongside significant dispersion in wages paid for the same type of work in the same location. These features of preindustrial wage payments have been obscured by the construction of real wage series, which introduce variation in the deflator. In this paper we show that the standard explanations for wage movements in economic history cannot explain the nominal patterns observed in the data. We suggest that these wages indicate an imperfectly competitive labour market characterised by monopsony and employer power. We discuss the implications for the eighteenth-century British economy and research into long-run wages more generally.
| Type: | Working / discussion paper |
|---|---|
| Title: | Nominal wage patterns, monopsony, and labour market power in early modern England |
| Publisher version: | https://www.lse.ac.uk/Economic-History/Assets/Docu... |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This version is the version of record. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions. |
| Keywords: | labour markets, Industrial revolution, Construction workers, 18th C England, wages, real wages, Monopsony |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10173762 |
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