Piece-rates and prosperity: evidence from the late nineteenth-century tobacco industry

Tim Leunig () and Maria Stanfors
Additional contact information
Tim Leunig: London School of Economics

No 10003, Working Papers from Economic History Society

Abstract: "This paper uses a new and detailed survey of cigar making employers and employees to investigate two related discrimination issues. First, were piece rate cigar makers – the skilled aristocracy of this industry – paid differently by gender? We find that they were, but that the differences can be more than explained by differences in characteristics such as age and experience. Second, we ask whether men were more likely than women to be promoted from the relatively lowly paid time rate section of the industry to become piece rate workers. Although, in line with work by Burnette and Goldin, we might expect firms to pay piece rate workers ”fairly” it is not at all obvious whether we would expect them to allocate workers to higher paid positions ”fairly”. In fact we find that they do: women were much less likely to be on piece rates, but given their characteristics they were as likely to make it as men. There was no glass ceiling in this industry. The reason that women are (much) less well paid is that age and experience mattered, and for some combination of societal expectations and personal preferences, women are more likely to spend time away from the labour market raising children, to the detriment of their earning potential."

JEL-codes: N00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-03
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.ehs.org.uk/dotAsset/0c08cab4-6bc5-4ec3-985c-f8f8bca30c91.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.ehs.org.uk/dotAsset/0c08cab4-6bc5-4ec3-985c-f8f8bca30c91.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://ehs.org.uk/dotAsset/0c08cab4-6bc5-4ec3-985c-f8f8bca30c91.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:ehs:wpaper:10003

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Economic History Society Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chair Public Engagement Committe (currently David Higgins - Newcastle) ().