Migration and Agricultural Markets
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Evolution of a domestic rural-wage gap supplies test of the extent to which peasant farming retarded the rural exodus.

Sicsic: French wage gap was narrower than British once – French labour market more perfect than British one! – Postel-Winay and Weir full agricultural wage exceeded wage - explains why French labourers small parcels of land slow to emigrate – does not explain why gap in wage so small.

Relative importance of demographic factors and economic factors affecting rural migration and agricultural real wages needs to be sorted out – at present the size of the wage gap does not support the view that agricultural retention of labour seriously inhibited French industrial development before WW1.

Agriculture and Industry

Peasant agriculture primary structural cause productivity gap put by O’Brien – ALP worked out dividing share national output produced in agriculture by share of agriculture in national employment – England 50% more productive than France – O and K conclude growth French economy seriously impeded by failure French farmers to adopt English methods – failure they attribute to largely small size of French farms.

Evidence agricultural inelasticity may have slowed industrial expansion in the 1860s – demand for farm produce faster than supply – Verley mrowing marginal costs of farm produce may have halted the Second Empire’s promising economic expansion – high income elasticty of demand for foodstuffs by French people savings diverted from investment in manufacturing to investment farming – YED high for meat but PED low so ratchet effect

Sharp contrast to O’Brien and Keyder – agricultural labour productivity growth falling from middle 19^th century – O and K see it rising 1880s Grantham – rate of whole 19^th century equal to rate of growth in Britain.

O and K underestimate agric. Productivity as discount workers who only work in agric. Part-time – other jobs

Increase agric. Wages forced many firms to arrest production – unable to meet wages of harvest glut. 0 form of retardation paradoxical that traditional agricultural structures impeded move from low to high productivity employments – implies blockage, if existed, perfection seasonal labour markets.

Symbiotic evolution of forms of manufacturing sufficiently flexible to release a significant proportion of workers into the fields and specialized forms of farming that could achieve high levels of productivity on condition that seasonal supply of labour was large enough to harvest the crop is one of the central characteristics of the development of a more specialized economy between 1500 and 1850.

Magnac and Postel Vinay – elasticity of labour supply agriculture to industry was 0.5% - industrial expansion not limited cost of recruiting workers from agric. –

The perception that 19^th century French industrialization significantly retarded by agrarian structures not been cliometrically confirmed

Growth Agric. Productivity in 19^th century

Grantham backward counting to gain estimate capital agricultural to work out TFP – estimated rates of productivity growth 19^th century – are comparable with those estimated for Britain and the US – 1860s only decade when agricultural supply potential constraint economic expansion – 1800 to 1850and 1860 1915 British AP grew by 05 to .6 %

Increased factor productivity - might have been the effects of the Revolution - - inflation allowed farmers to write off debt 0 some bought land previously rented – rising prices encouraged investment in arming – 1820 – 1870 unprecedented increase agric. Improvements

Other Notes in this Category

1. Introduction
2. Migration and Agricultural Markets
3. paradox of pre-Revolutionary productivity
4. Peasant Farming and Agric. Backwardness
5. Persistence of the open-fields
6. Retardation in the age of Industry
7. Structural Hypotheses
8. The Cliometrics of French Retardation

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