Nominal wage patterns, monopsony, and labour market power in early modern England

Meredith Paker, Judy Stephenson and Patrick Wallis

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Records of long-eighteenth-century English wage rates exhibit almost absolute nominal rigidity over many decades, alongside significant dispersion between the wages paid by different organizations for the same type of work in the same location. These features of preindustrial wages have been obscured by data aggregation and the construction of real wage series, which introduce variation. In this paper, we argue that the standard explanations for wage rigidity in economic history are insufficient. We show econometric evidence for monopsony power in one major organization and argue that the main historical wage series are also affected by employer power. Eighteenth-century England had an imperfectly competitive labour market with large frictions. This gave large organizations the power to set wage policies. We discuss the implications for the eighteenth-century British economy and research into long-run wages more generally.

Keywords: real wages; construction; eighteenth-century England; industrial revolution; labour markets; monopsony; wages (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J21 J22 J23 J31 J41 K12 N33 N63 N83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2025-02-28
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-gro and nep-his
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in Economic History Review, 28, February, 2025, 78(1), pp. 179 - 206. ISSN: 1468-0289

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/121599/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Nominal wage patterns, monopsony, and labour market power in early modern England (2025)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:121599

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().