TY  - JOUR
AU  - Atack,Jeremy
AU  - Bateman,Fred
AU  - Margo,Robert A.
TI  - Rising Wage Dispersion Across American Manufacturing Establishments, 1850-1880
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 7932
PY  - 2000
Y2  - October 2000
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w7932
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w7932.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Jeremy Atack
Department of Economics
Vanderbilt University
VU Station B #351819
2301 Vanderbilt Place
Nashville, TN 37235-1819
Tel: 615-343-2467
Fax: 615/343-8495
E-Mail: jeremy.atack@vanderbilt.edu

Fred Bateman
Department of Economics
Brooks Hall
University of Georgia
Athens, GA  30602-6254
E-Mail: fbateman@terry.uga.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
AB  - We use data from the manuscript censuses of manufacturing for 1850, 1860, 1870, and 1880 to study the dispersion of average monthly wages across establishments.  We find a marked increased in wage inequality over the period, an increase that cannot be explained by biases in the data or changes in census enumeration procedures.  Based on log wage regressions on establishment characteristics we compute a decomposition of the change in wage inequality between 1850 and 1880.  The decomposition reveals that changes in  wage structure'   the regression coefficients and the standard error of the residuals   largely offset each: changes in the coefficients produced a reduction in wage inequality, while residual inequality increased.  Most of the rise in wage inequality can be attributed to an increased concentration of employment in large establishments, which paid relatively low wages.  We present indirect evidence that the negative effect of size on wages reflected differences in skill composition: workforces in large establishments were less skilled than in small establishments.
ER  -