TY - JOUR
T1 - Institutional choice matters
T2 - The poor law and implicit labor contracts in Victorian Lancashire
AU - Kiesling, L. Lynne
N1 - Funding Information:
* I have received helpful comments from Kyle Bagwell, George Boyer, Thomas Downes, David Feldman, Will Hausman, Michael Huberman, David Leblang, Mary MacKinnon, Charles Miles, Joel Mokyr, James Montgomery, Larry Neal, Diane Owen, John Panzar, Stephen Quinn, Andrew Rutten, Dennis Sullivan, Christopher Udry, participants in the 1992 Social Science History Association Meetings and the 1992 Cliometrics Conference, workshop participants at Northwestern University, the University of Illinois, and the College of William and Mary, and two anonymous referees. I have received financial support for this research from a Cole Grant-in-Aid from the Economic History Association, a Summer Research Grant from the College of William and Mary, the Institute for Humane Studies, and a Dissertation Year Grant from Northwestern University. All remaining errors are my own.
PY - 1996/1
Y1 - 1996/1
N2 - This paper augments previous research on the use of public relief as insurance during industrial downturns by looking at the timing of movement to public relief over the course of the Lancashire cotton famine (1861-1865). Able-bodied workers and their non-able-bodied counterparts, some of whom were the relatives of able-bodied workers, used public relief only as an assistance institution of final recourse, requesting it with a lag relative to the onset of the distress. The comovement of able-bodied and non-able-bodied recipients to public relief suggests a prevalent culture of income smoothing between the two groups and demonstrates the importance of informal assistance in the implicit labor contract in textile manufacturing.
AB - This paper augments previous research on the use of public relief as insurance during industrial downturns by looking at the timing of movement to public relief over the course of the Lancashire cotton famine (1861-1865). Able-bodied workers and their non-able-bodied counterparts, some of whom were the relatives of able-bodied workers, used public relief only as an assistance institution of final recourse, requesting it with a lag relative to the onset of the distress. The comovement of able-bodied and non-able-bodied recipients to public relief suggests a prevalent culture of income smoothing between the two groups and demonstrates the importance of informal assistance in the implicit labor contract in textile manufacturing.
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U2 - 10.1006/exeh.1996.0003
DO - 10.1006/exeh.1996.0003
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0029664353
VL - 33
SP - 65
EP - 85
JO - Explorations in Economic History
JF - Explorations in Economic History
SN - 0014-4983
IS - 1
ER -