IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ozechr/v47y2007i1p95-120.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Labour And Land In Ghana, 1874–1939: A Shifting Ratio And An Institutional Revolution

Author

Listed:
  • Gareth Austin

Abstract

The Second Industrial Revolution created markets for new products for Ghana, rubber and then cocoa beans. Mechanised transport spurred the spread of cocoa planting. The paper estimates the resultant shift in factor ratios, and synthesises the data for prices of land‐use rights and wages as the economy moved from land abundance to localised land scarcity. The consequences for factor markets were institutional rather than simply quantitative. For the first time markets in land use rights became widespread, while hired labour and farm pledging replaced slavery and debt bondage, as cocoa income made it possible for farmers to offer labourers sufficient inducement to enter the labour market.

Suggested Citation

  • Gareth Austin, 2007. "Labour And Land In Ghana, 1874–1939: A Shifting Ratio And An Institutional Revolution," Australian Economic History Review, Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 47(1), pages 95-120, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ozechr:v:47:y:2007:i:1:p:95-120
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8446.2006.00198.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8446.2006.00198.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1467-8446.2006.00198.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Remi Jedwab & Alexander Moradi, 2016. "The Permanent Effects of Transportation Revolutions in Poor Countries: Evidence from Africa," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 98(2), pages 268-284, May.
    2. Gareth Austin & Jörg Baten & Alexander Moradi, 2007. "Exploring the evolution of living standards in Ghana, 1880- 2000: An anthropometric approach," Working Papers 7021, Economic History Society.
    3. Mohammed Iddrisu Kambala, 2023. "Colonial Origins of Comparative Development in Ghana," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 59(2), pages 188-208, February.
    4. Jerven, Morten & Austin, Gareth & Green, Erik & Uche, Chibuike & Frankema, Ewout & Fourie, Johan & Inikori, Joseph & Moradi, Alexander & Hillbom, Ellen, 2012. "Moving Forward in African Economic History. Bridging the Gap Between Methods and Sources," Lund Papers in Economic History 124, Lund University, Department of Economic History.
    5. Klas Rönnbäck, 2014. "Living standards on the pre-colonial Gold Coast: a quantitative estimate of African laborers’ welfare ratios," European Review of Economic History, European Historical Economics Society, vol. 18(2), pages 185-202.
    6. Gareth Austin, 2014. "Vent for surplus or productivity breakthrough? The Ghanaian cocoa take-off, c. 1890–1936," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 67(4), pages 1035-1064, November.
    7. Madeeha Gohar Qureshi & Unbreen Qayyum & Musleh Ud Din & Ejaz Ghani, 2021. "Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson’s Notion of Exogenous Imposition of Colonial Institutions onto Colonies— A Critique in the Light of Historical Evidence," The Pakistan Development Review, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, vol. 60(2), pages 133-152.

    More about this item

    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:bla:ozechr:v:47:y:2007:i:1:p:95-120. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/oznzsea.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.