IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/qjecon/v99y1984i3p461-487..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Relative Productivity Hypothesis of Industrialization: The American Case, 1820 to 1850

Author

Listed:
  • Claudia Goldin
  • Kenneth Sokoloff

Abstract

A two-sector model is used to explore the role of the agricultural sector in the process of industrialization. Our hypothesis is that areas industrialize earlier where the wages for females and children relative to those for adult males are initially low. Furthermore, the lower this relative productivity of females and children in the pre-industrial economy, the proportionately more will their relative wages increase, and the higher will be the ratio of manufactured to agricultural goods. The model is used to interpret the conditions that fostered the rapid industrialization of the American Northeast, but not the South, from 1820 to 1850.

Suggested Citation

  • Claudia Goldin & Kenneth Sokoloff, 1984. "The Relative Productivity Hypothesis of Industrialization: The American Case, 1820 to 1850," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 99(3), pages 461-487.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:qjecon:v:99:y:1984:i:3:p:461-487.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.2307/1885960
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Metzer, Jacob, 1975. "Rational management, modern business practices, and economies of scale in the ante-bellum southern plantations," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 12(2), pages 123-150, April.
    2. Gavin Wright, 1981. "Cheap Labor and Southern Textiles, 1880–1930," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 96(4), pages 605-629.
    3. Hazard, Blanche Evans, 1921. "The Organization of the Boot and Shoe Industry in Massachusetts before 1875," History of Economic Thought Books, McMaster University Archive for the History of Economic Thought, number hazard1921.
    4. Lazonick, William H., 1981. "Production Relations, Labor Productivity, and Choice of Technique: British and U.S. Cotton Spinning," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 41(3), pages 491-516, September.
    5. Goldin, Claudia & Sokoloff, Kenneth, 1982. "Women, Children, and Industrialization in the Early Republic: Evidence from the Manufacturing Censuses," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 42(4), pages 741-774, December.
    6. Clarke, Richard N & Summers, Lawrence H, 1980. "The Labour Scarcity Controversy Reconsidered," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 90(357), pages 129-139, March.
    7. Wright, Gavin, 1979. "Cheap Labor and Southern Textiles before 1880," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 39(3), pages 655-680, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Gillian Hamilton, 1999. "The Decline of Apprenticeship in North America: Evidence from Montreal," Working Papers hamiltng-99-01, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
    2. James, John A. & Skinner, Jonathan S., 1985. "The Resolution of the Labor-Scarcity Paradox," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 45(3), pages 513-540, September.
    3. Nicolas Ziebarth, 2013. "Are China and India Backwards? Evidence from the 19th Century U.S. Census of Manufactures," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 16(1), pages 86-99, January.
    4. Allen, Robert C., 2014. "American Exceptionalism as a Problem in Global History," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 74(2), pages 309-350, June.
    5. Charles W. Calomiris & Christopher Hanes, 1994. "Historical Macroeconomics and American Macroeconomic History," NBER Working Papers 4935, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Kenneth L. Sokoloff, 1984. "Was the Transition from the Artisanal Shop to the Non-Mechanized Fctry Assoc. w/Gains in Effcny?: Evdnc. from the U.S. Mnfctr. Censuses of 1820 & 1850," NBER Working Papers 1386, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Kiminori Matsuyama, 1991. "Increasing Returns, Industrialization, and Indeterminacy of Equilibrium," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 106(2), pages 617-650.
    8. Naomi R. Lamoreaux, 1991. "Information Problems and Banks' Specialization in Short-Term Commercial Lending: New England in the Nineteenth Century," NBER Chapters, in: Inside the Business Enterprise: Historical Perspectives on the Use of Information, pages 161-204, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Committee, Nobel Prize, 2023. "Scientific Background to the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2023," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 2023-2, Nobel Prize Committee.
    10. Dessy, Sylvain Éloi, 2002. "A Theory of the Emergence of Compulsory Education Laws," Cahiers de recherche 0209, Université Laval - Département d'économique.
    11. William Lazonick, 2018. "Comments on Gary Pisano: “toward a prescriptive theory of dynamic capabilities”," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 27(6), pages 1165-1174.
    12. Olmstead, Alan L. & Rhode, Paul W., 2008. "Biological Innovation and Productivity Growth in the Antebellum Cotton Economy," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 68(4), pages 1123-1171, December.
    13. Timothy W. Guinnane, 2011. "The Historical Fertility Transition: A Guide for Economists," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 49(3), pages 589-614, September.
    14. Timothy Leunig, 2003. "A British industrial success: productivity in the Lancashire and New England cotton spinning industries a century ago," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 56(1), pages 90-117, February.
    15. Kenneth L. Sokoloff, 1986. "Productivity Growth in Manufacturing during Early Industrialization: Evidence from the American Northeast, 1820-1860," NBER Chapters, in: Long-Term Factors in American Economic Growth, pages 679-736, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Ager, Philipp & Brueckner, Markus & Herz, Benedikt, 2017. "Structural Change and the Fertility Transition in the American South," Discussion Papers on Economics 6/2017, University of Southern Denmark, Department of Economics.
    17. David Kunst, 2019. "Deskilling among Manufacturing Production Workers," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 19-050/VI, Tinbergen Institute, revised 30 Dec 2020.
    18. Marco Manacorda & Furio Camillo Rosati, 2011. "Industrial Structure and Child Labor Evidence from the Brazilian Population Census," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 59(4), pages 753-776.
    19. Marco Manacorda, 2006. "Child Labor and the Labor Supply of Other Household Members: Evidence from 1920 America," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(5), pages 1788-1801, December.
    20. Dessy, Sylvain E., 2003. "Endogenous Technical Progress and the Emergence of Child Labor Laws," Cahiers de recherche 0317, CIRPEE.

    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:oup:qjecon:v:99:y:1984:i:3:p:461-487.. 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/qje .

    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.