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Coercive Contract Enforcement : Law and the Labor Market in 19th Century Industrial Britain
Naidu, Suresh - 2011
British Master and Servant law made employee contract breach a criminal offense until 1875. We develop a contracting model generating equilibrium contract breach and prosecutions, then exploit exogenous changes in output prices to examine the effects of labor demand shocks on prosecutions....
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012461607
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Lifting the Curse of Dimensionality : Measures of the Labor Legislation Climate in the States During the Progressive Era
Fishback, Price V. - 2008
One of the most difficult problems in the social sciences is measuring the policy climate in societies. Prior to the 1930s the vast majority of labor regulations in the U.S. were enacted at the state level. In this paper we develop several summary measures of labor regulation that document the...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012464480
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Health and Safety vs. Freedom of Contract : The Tortured Path of Wage and Hours Limits Through the State Legislatures and the Courts
Fishback, Price Van Meter - National Bureau of Economic Research - 2022
The paper examines changes in wage and hour labor regulation between 1898 and 1938. Many see the 1905 Lochner Supreme Court decision striking down hours limits for men as the beginning of 30 years in which labor regulation was stymied by the doctrine of "freedom of contract." That issue played a...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013388792
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Labor Laws and Innovation
Acharya, Viral V. - 2010
Stringent labor laws can provide firms a commitment device to not punish short-run failures and thereby spur their employees to pursue value-enhancing innovative activities. Using patents and citations as proxies for innovation, we identify this effect by exploiting the time-series variation...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012462173
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The Impact of Industrial Relations Legislation on British Union Density
Freeman, Richard - 1989
The unionized share of the work force changed markedly in the United Kingdom between the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1970s density rose steadily, making the United Kingdom the most heavily organized large OECD country. In the 1980s, by contrast, density fell by 1.4 percentage points per annum -- a...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012475874
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The Rise of the Engineer : Inventing the Professional Inventor During the Industrial Revolution
Hanlon, W. Walker - National Bureau of Economic Research - 2022
Why was the Industrial Revolution successful at generating sustained growth? Some have argued that there was a fundamental change in the way that new technology was developed during this period, but evidence for this argument remains largely anecdotal. This paper provides direct quantitative...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012938720
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The Second World War, Inequality and the Social Contract in England
Heldring, Leander; Robinson, James A.; Whitfill, Parker J. - National Bureau of Economic Research - 2022
wealth inequality and vote shares for the Labour Party in England around World War II we establish two results. First, on … the south. In the north of England bombing led to significant falls in inequality. Second, heavier bombing led to a … the War also led to a reconfiguration of the social contract in England …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012814452
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Data Gaps and the Policy Response to the Novel Coronavirus
Stock, James H. - 2020
This note lays out the basic Susceptible-Infected-Recovered (SIR) epidemiological model of contagion, with a target audience of economists who want a framework for understanding the effects of social distancing and containment policies on the evolution of contagion and interactions with the...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012482082
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Government, Openness and Finance : Past and Present
Demetriades, Panicos O. - 2010
finance in England and then broadening the analysis to 84 countries from 1960 to 2004. For 18th century England, we find that … measured as the value of private loans issued at the Bank of England. For the wider panel of countries and more recent data, we …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012462195
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Does Trade Cause Capital to Flow? Evidence from Historical Rainfalls
Kalemli-Ozcan, Sebnem - 2010
Estimating the effect of trade on capital flows is difficult given the inherent identification problem. We use fluctuations in rainfall to capture the exogenous variation in trade between Germany, France, the U.K., and the Ottoman Empire during 1859-1913. The provisionistic policy of the Ottoman...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012462618