 When Globalization Comes Home: Commodity Prices and Labour Conflict in Italy, 1881–1910Tancredi Buscemi, Anna Missiaia and Dario Pellegrino No 22107, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research Abstract: The turn of the twentieth century marked the rise of mass labour conflict in the industrializing West, alongside a general expansion of global market integration. This paper tests the link between the two, using newly digitized provincial data on strikes in Italy (1881–1910) and province-specific measures of exposure to world markets, based on international commodity price shocks and occupational shares. We focus on silk cocoons, a sizeable home production for many rural households and the raw input of the main Italian export at that time, and find that falls in their world price were followed by more strikes for higher wages or better conditions in agriculture and low-mechanization sectors, as workers sought to offset lost household income by striking in the sectors where household members were employed. A contrasting case, Sicilian sulphur, in which the commodity entered firm revenues rather than household budgets, is consistent with a dynamic internal to the sector: strikes for higher wages rose with prices, while strikes in defence of existing conditions rose when prices fell. Keywords: First globalization; International trade; Strikes; Italy (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:22107 Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from Access Statistics for this paper More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX, UK. |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.