Real Wages and Labour Productivity in Britain and Germany, 1871-1938: A Unified Approach to the International Comparison of Living Standards

Publication Type  Preprints
Author  Stephen N. Broadberry, Carsten Burhop
Year of Publication  2009
Issue  2009/18
Abstract  Throughout the period 1871-1938, the average British worker was better off than the average German worker, but there were significant differences between major sectors. For the aggregate economy, the real wage gap was about the same as the labour productivity gap, but again there were important sectoral differences. Compared to their productivity, German industrial workers were poorly paid, whereas German agricultural and service sector employees were overpaid. This affected the competitiveness of the two countries in these sectors. There were also impor-tant differences in comparative real wages by skill level, affecting the extent of poverty.
Publisher  Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods
Place Published  Bonn
Export  Tagged BibTex XML
Download  
Forthcoming in:  Journal of Economic History, In Press
Supplementary Material  
Keywords  Economic history, Britain, Germany, Real wages
JEL-Codes  N13, N33, E24