Goldin, Claudia; Margo, Robert A. - National Bureau of Economic Research - 1989
antebellum fluctuations were more apparent than real; nominal wages, not labor quantities, did most of the adjusting. We analyze … data on real wages for laborers, artisans, and clerks across four regions (Northeast, North Central, South Atlantic, and … South Central) during 1821 to 1856. Various time-series econometric methods reveal that shocks to real wages persisted even …