Diminishing Returns at Work by John H. Pencavel

Author:John H. Pencavel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2018-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

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1. In July 1918, there were well over four times the number of women employed in the munitions industries as there were in July 1914 (Marwick 1970, 91).

2. For an examination of the recommendations of the Munition Workers Committee, see Pencavel (2015b).

3. .See US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics (1917a–d and 1919), Bulletins 221, 222, 223, 230, and 249.

4. There are two more weekly observations than those used in earlier work (Pencavel 2015b). The earlier research overlooked two weeks that are included in the present analysis. Both of the added observations are for the week ending September 2, 1916, one for the 40 women milling screw threads and the other for the 56 men sizing fuze bodies. The presence or absence of these two observations does not change inferences drawn.

5. For instance, in the week ending 30 September 1916, the government called for a four-day general holiday.

6. Though Vernon (1917) sketches one figure relating hourly output to weekly hours of work of these workers, he presents no equations. To the best of my knowledge, the first regression equations fitted to these data are those in Pencavel (2015b).

7. The quotes here serve to distinguish the Luddites of common characterization—senseless opponents of the march toward mechanization—from the Luddites of historical fact. See Hobsbawm (1952).

8. Sunday work may not imply a seven-day working week around holidays when Sunday might be a working day in lieu of a different day of rest. However, this will be an infrequent event. The Health of Munition Workers Committee interpreted Sunday work as a seven-day working week.

9. Sjt is a dichotomous variable for all but four of the weekly observations. For these four, Sjt lies between zero and unity. All four observations relate to the 15 youths boring top caps and Sjt is the fraction of these youths working on Sunday in week ending t.

10. The addition of Sjt may be accommodated in the models in chapter 3 as follows: For the specification inspired by Cobb and Douglas, suppose in equation (3) bjt = exp(c1· Sjt) . Then equations (CD-1) and (CD-2) have the term c1· Sjt added to the right-hand side. For the specification inspired by Gompertz, we may write equation (2) as L = E.H + c2S and the term c2Sjt will be added to the right-hand side of equations (GZ-1) and (GZ-2).

11. If effort takes the form of Ejt = α1 + α2Hjt + α3Sjt, then an interaction term Sjt · Hjt will appear in the expression for Ljt and in Gompertz’s production function. This specification was also estimated with consequences very similar to those when Sjt appears additively as in equation (13).

12. The precise statement is “The evidence is conclusive that Sunday labour by depriving the worker of his weekly rest offers him no sufficient opportunity for recovering from fatigue, and is not productive of greater output except for quite short and isolated periods. . . . [S]even days’ labour only produces six days’ output and . . . reductions in Sunday work have not in fact involved any appreciable loss of output” (HMWC 1919, p.

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