TY  - JOUR
AU  - Goldin,Claudia
AU  - Margo,Robert A.
TI  - Wages, Prices, and Labor Markets Before the Civil War
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 3198
PY  - 1989
Y2  - December 1989
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w3198
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w3198.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Claudia Goldin
National Bureau of Economic Research
1050 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617/613-1200
Fax: 617/613-1245
E-Mail: cgoldin@harvard.edu

Robert A. Margo
Department of Economics
Boston University
270 Bay State Road
Boston, MA 02215
Tel: 617/353-6819
Fax: 617/343-8495
E-Mail: margora@bu.edu
M1  - published as Claudia Goldin, Robert A. Margo. "Wages, Prices, and Labor Markets before the Civil War," in Claudia Goldin and Hugh Rockoff, editors, "Strategic Factors in Nineteenth Century American Economic History: A Volume to Honor Robert W. Fogel" University of Chicago Press (1992)

AB  - Two opposing views of the antebellum economy are tested. One is that aggregate economic activity was severely diminished and that unemployment was substantial and prolonged during several downturns. The alternative interpretation is that 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 five years after an innovation, but that their impact eventually vanished. The persistence of shocks was less for agricultural labor than for other occupations, less for growing regions than for more mature ones, less for unskilled than for skilled labor, and probably less before 1860 than after. Although nominal wages and prices never strayed far from each other over the long run, the persistence of shocks was considerable during the 1821 to 1856 period. We, therefore, find evidence to support the first view of the antebellum economy, although the degree of unemployment in cities and industrial towns remains unknown.
ER  -