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Project

Gender inequalities in labor market outcomes: Learning from experiences in 19th-century West Flanders

Economists debate whether institutional (e.g. minimum wage policies) or market (forces of supply and demand) factors are at the root of inequalities on labor markets. This dissertation provides a long-run perspective on this debate through a multi-dimensional approach, in which both institutional and market drivers are assessed. In the first chapter, a reconstruction effort of said labor inequalities is presented, with an analysis of the evolution of female intergenerational mobility throughout the 19th century in West Flanders. The second and third chapters respectively then assess the role of the institutional framework and the interactive mechanism of supply and demand in shaping labor market divergences. The second chapter analyses how feudalism in 11th-century England affected differences in knowledge diffusion and technology adoption, while the third chapter investigates how technological change affected employment and wage inequality in Belgian 19th-century labor markets. The final chapter assesses how a lack of institutional checks-and-balances leads to anti-market behavior of the form of collusive wage-setting behavior by Belgian coal firms in the long 19th century, and emphasizes labor market collusion’s significant negative effects on the Belgian labor force in terms of wage growth.

Date:14 Sep 2016 →  14 Aug 2022
Keywords:gender inequalities
Disciplines:History, Economic history
Project type:PhD project