PRODUCTIVITY AND EFFORT: THE LABOR-SUPPLY DECISIONS OF LATE VICTORIAN COALMINERS

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Abstract
It is widely believed that one of the main causes of productivity decline in British coalmining in the late nineteenth century was that when wage rates increased, miners responded by reducing work effort and/or attendance. However, previous empirical studies have conflated behavioral responses with correlations between coal-seam quality and wage rates. Using individual panel data from a single mine, I show that the short-run wage elasticity of worker effort was in fact positive. The true elasticity of attendance is less clear, but there is no support for the idea that absenteeism increased when wage rates rose.

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