Impacts of the Industrial Revolution on Wages and Skills of Workers: The Silk Weaving Industry in Early Twentieth-Century Japan

Tetsuji Okazaki

No 20-003E, CIGS Working Paper Series from The Canon Institute for Global Studies

Abstract: This paper explores the implications of technological change on the wages and skills of workers in early twentieth-century Japan. The Japanese economy experienced essential elements of the industrial revolution, such as the adoption of the factory system and mechanization, in this period. Exploiting detailed plant-level data on the silk weaving industry, we compare wage and composition of workers between powered plants and nonpowered plants. We found that (a) the wage, (b) the relative wage of male adult workers to female adult workers, and (c) the ratio of male workers, were all higher at powered plants than non-powered plants. (a) reflects the higher marginal productivity of labour, while (b) and (c) reflect the emergence of a new type of skilled worker, i.e. mechanics.

Pages: 39
Date: 2020-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cigs.canon/article/pdf/wpaper20-003E.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:cnn:wpaper:20-003e

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CIGS Working Paper Series from The Canon Institute for Global Studies Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by The Canon Institute for Global Studies ().