ESHSI Distinguished Lecture 2024

The Economic and Social History Society of Ireland are delighted to announce that Professor Judy Stephenson will deliver this year's online distinguished lecture on Friday 4th October at 4pm

The lecture is entitled "Wages before machines: Understanding the wage puzzle of the early Industrial Revolution"

Abstract:
Economic historians have used day wages as a key economic indicator since the mid nineteenth century. Decades of scholarship using these wages has firmly established that throughout the late eighteenth century, as investment in new technology and production soared and output rose, ordinary workers wage incomes did not rise in Britain. Workers did not see income gains from industrialisation until the 1860s. This has often been told as a story of ‘exploitation’, but, as Crafts (2021) showed, in a macroeconomic framework wages were better than could have been expected given demographic pressures. However, the microeconomics of wage bargaining are hitherto unexplored. This lecture shows how examining the frictions and institutions of wage determination, with cases from the building industry and textile industries, helps explain how the early modern labour market ‘set’ wages, and created and supported rigidities in wage bargaining, which limited labours’ share.
 
You can register for the zoom link here: https://ucd-ie.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_LumG-H8GTUm7FmB8K3tgJg#/registration