Modernization in Progress: Part-Year Operation, Mechanization, and Labor Force Composition in Late Imperial Russia

Amanda Gregg and Tamar Matiashvili

The Journal of Economic History, 2022, vol. 82, issue 4, 1143-1182

Abstract: This paper investigates part-year factory operation, a common but understudied dimension of industrializing economies, in a prototypical late-industrializing setting that offers rich factory-level data: Imperial Russia. Newly compiled data provides detailed descriptions of all Russian manufacturing firms operating in 1894 and shows that factories operating a greater number of annual working days were more mechanized, more urban, more likely to employ women and children, more productive, and more likely to survive. Rather than arguing that part-year operation demonstrated Russia’s uniquely inexorable backwardness, we stress operating time’s relationship to fundamental drivers of growth, including urbanization, geography, and institutions.

Date: 2022
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