Land, Labor and the Wage-Rental Ratio: Factor Price Convergence in the Late Nineteenth Century /

This paper augments the new historical literature on factor price convergence. The focus is on the late nineteenth century, when economic convergence among the current OECD countries was dramatic; and the focus is on the convergence between Old World and New, by far the biggest participants in the g...

Ausführliche Beschreibung

Gespeichert in:
Weitere Titel:
Land, Labor and the Wage-Rental Ratio
1. Verfasser:
O'Rourke, Kevin
Körperschaft:
National Bureau of Economic Research
Weitere Verfasser:
Taylor, Alan M., Williamsmn, Jeffrey G.
Format:
Elektronisch E-Book
Sprache:
Englisch
Veröffentlicht:
Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 1996.
Cambridge, Mass. : National Bureau of Economic Research, 1996.
Zusammenfassung:
This paper augments the new historical literature on factor price convergence. The focus is on the late nineteenth century, when economic convergence among the current OECD countries was dramatic; and the focus is on the convergence between Old World and New, by far the biggest participants in the global convergence during the period; and the focus is on land and labor, the two most important factors of production in the nineteenth century. Wage-rental ratios boomed in the Old World and collapsed in the New, moving the resource-rich and labor scarce New World closer to the resource-scarce and labor-abundant Old World. The paper uses both computable general equilibrium models and econometrics to identify the forces causing the convergence. These include: commodity price convergence and the Heckscher-Ohlin Theorem of factor price equalization; migration, capital-deepening and frontier disappearance, factors stressed by Malthus, Ricardo, Wicksell and Viner; and factor-saving biases associated with induced-innovational theory, an endogenous response to relative factor scarcities.
Umfang:
1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);
Anmerkungen:
November 1996.
Schlagworte: