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The Skills Of The Unskilled In The American Industrial Revolution, James Bessen
The Skills Of The Unskilled In The American Industrial Revolution, James Bessen
Faculty Scholarship
Were ordinary factory workers unskilled and was technology "de-skilling" during the Industrial Revolution? I measure foregone output to estimate the human capital investments in mule spinners and power loom tenders in ante-bellum Lowell. These investments rivaled those of craft apprentices, suggesting a different view of industrial technology. Accounting for skill, multi-factor productivity growth was negligible, contrary to previous findings. From 1834-55, firms made increasing investments in skill, allowing workers to tend more machines and generating rapid growth of per-capita output. This growing investment was motivated partly by changing factor prices and more by a changing labor supply. Calculations show that …
New Plants As Natural Experiments In Economic Adjustment: Adjustment Costs, Learning-By-Doing And Lumpy Investment, James Bessen
New Plants As Natural Experiments In Economic Adjustment: Adjustment Costs, Learning-By-Doing And Lumpy Investment, James Bessen
Faculty Scholarship
A large sample of new plants is studied to reveal detailed adjustment behavior for capital, labor and productivity. Once production has begun, capital adjusts almost as quickly as labor. Overall, capital adjustment is lumpy while labor follows a learning-by-doing model rather than a convex adjustment cost model. Plants are quite heterogeneous, however: convex adjustment costs appear important at small plants, but large plants exhibit lumpy investment and substantial investment in learning-by-doing. A positive association between plant productivity growth and wages (and also the change in wages) corroborates the importance of learning-by-doing. Also, learning-by-doing appears to influence the behavior of large …