Globalization and Labor Market Integration in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Asia

Gregg Huff and Giovanni Caggiano

Working Papers from Business School - Economics, University of Glasgow

Abstract: This article uses new data sets to analyze labor market integration between 1882 and 1936 in an area of Asia stretching from South India to Southeastern China and encompassing the three Southeast Asian countries of Burma, Malaya and Thailand. We find that by the late nineteenth century, globalization, of which a principal feature was the mass migration of Indians and Chinese to Southeast Asia, gave rise to both an integrated Asian labor market and a period of real wage convergence. Integration did not, however, extend beyond Asia to include core industrial countries. Asian and core areas, in contrast to globally integrated commodity markets, showed divergent trends in unskilled real wages

Keywords: Globalization; Labor market integration; Migration; Southeast Asia; Terms of trade, real wage convergence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F15 F22 J31 N35 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cwa, nep-dev, nep-his, nep-lab, nep-mig and nep-sea
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Chapter: Globalization and labor market integration in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Asia (2007)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gla:glaewp:2007_14

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