TY  - JOUR
AU  - Davis,Lance E.
AU  - Gallman,Robert E.
AU  - Hutchins,Teresa D.
TI  - Risk Sharing, Crew Quality, Labor Shares and Wages in the Nineteenth Century American Whaling Industry
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Historical Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 13
PY  - 1990
Y2  - May 1990
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/h0013
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/h0013.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Lance E. Davis
Humanities and Social Sciences
California Institute of Technology
1200 East California Boulevard MC 228-77
Pasadena, CA  91125
Tel: 626/395-4092
Fax: 626/793-8580
E-Mail: led@hss.caltech.edu
AB  - This paper examines 36.640 labor contracts signed between whalemen and the agents who organized 1,258 whaling voyages that departed from New Bedford, Massachusetts between January I. 1840 and December 31, 1858 and between January I and December 31, 1866. The contracts contain information on the whaleman's station (occupation) and on his lay (the fraction of output of the voyage that he was entitled to receive upon completion). The paper investigates the benefits associated with this unique contract. examines the occupational and spatial distribution of lays. and compares wages in whaling with those available in the merchant marine and those earned in shore based pursuits. It also attempts to assess the efficiency of this early labor market and to explore the relationship between the labor contract, crew quality. technical change. and productivity.
ER  -