Volume 15, Number 2 (Spring) 1980
Field, Alexander James. 1980. "Industrialization and Skill Intensity: The Case of Massachusetts." Journal of Human Resources 15(2):149-175.
The impact of industrialization on an economy's overall demands for skill cannot be deduced on purely a priori grounds, but depends, rather, on such variables as the character of the agricultural sector at the onset of industrialization, the particular industries in which manufacturing employment is concentrated, and the distribution of tertiary-sector employment between professional, technical, and scientific occupations, and such relatively low-skill occupations as domestic service. An examination of the evolution of the Massachusetts economy between 1820 and 1880 concludes that there was no major increase in the overall demands for skilled and educated labor during this period, at least before 1870.
The author is Assistant Professor of Economics, Stanford University, and Visiting Member, The Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N.J. I have benefited in clarifying the ideas and analysis in this paper from seminars at Berkeley, Harvard, and Stanford. I would like to thank Moses Abramowitz, Paul David, Albert Fishlow, Richard Freeman, Nathan Rosenberg, Warren Sanderson, Lloyd Ulman, and two anonymous referees for helpful comments and criticisms of earlier versions.
© 2003 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
US ISSN 0022-166X