Wage competition between agriculture and industry in mid-nineteenth century France

This paper uses census evidence from mid-nineteenth century France to investigate how and to what extent the seasonality of agricultural labor demand affected industrial employment. The evidence suggests that migration between industry and agriculture was quite sensitive to relative wages in the two sectors and implies that firms reacted to agricultural competition using wage bonuses that varied with the firms' economic characteristics. We try to adjust for biases in the sources by estimating a formal model using data on industrial firms. The results lead to a firm quantitative description of the seasonal migration of labor during the early phase of industrialization and to a tentative assessment of its major effects. (C) 1997 Academic Press