TY  - JOUR
AU  - Chin,Aimee
AU  - Juhn,Chinhui
AU  - Thompson,Peter
TI  - Technical Change and the Wage Structure During the Second Industrial Revolution: Evidence from the Merchant Marine, 1865-1912
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 10728
PY  - 2004
Y2  - September 2004
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10728
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10728.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Aimee Chin
University of Houston
Department of Economics
204 McElhinney Hall
Houston, TX 77204-5019
Tel: 713/743-3761
Fax: 713/743-3798
E-Mail: achin@uh.edu

Chinhui Juhn
Department of Economics
University of Houston
Houston, TX 77204-5882
Tel: 713/743-3823
Fax: 713/743-3798
E-Mail: cjuhn@uh.edu

Peter Thompson
Goizueta Business School
Emory Universityy
1300 Clifton Road
Atlanta, GA 30322-2710
Tel: (305) 394-7408
E-Mail: peter.thompson@emory.edu
AB  - Using a large, individual-level wage data set, we examine the impact of a major technological innovation   the steam engine on skill demand and the wage structure in the merchant shipping industry. We find that the technical change created a new demand for skilled workers, the engineers, while destroying demand for workers with skills relevant only to sail. It had a deskilling effect on production work   able-bodied seamen (essentially, artisans) were replaced by unskilled engine room operatives. On the other hand, mates and able-bodied seamen employed on steam earned a premium relative to their counterparts on sail. A wholesale switch from sail to steam would increase the 90/10 wage ratio by 40%, with most of the rise in inequality coming from the creation of the engineer occupation.
ER  -