Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/192856 
Year of Publication: 
2018
Series/Report no.: 
Discussion Papers No. 874
Publisher: 
Statistics Norway, Research Department, Oslo
Abstract: 
This paper studies the impact of the construction of hydropower facilities on labor market outcomes in Norway at the turn of the twentieth century (1891-1920). The sudden breakthrough in hydropower technology provides a quasi-experimental setting, as not all municipalities had suitable natural endowments and the possible production sites where often located in remote areas. We find that hydropower municipalities experienced faster structural transformation and displayed higher occupational mobility. Unskilled workers and workers from low-status families did to a greater extent obtain skilled jobs in hydropower municipalities. We interpret this as evidence that this early twentieth-century technology was skill-biased, and that workers in the new skilled jobs were recruited from a broad segment of the population. However, areas affected by the new technology also experienced occupational polarization, with an increase in high- and low-skilled manual jobs at the expense of intermediate-skilled jobs.
Subjects: 
industrial revolution
hydropower production
structural transformation
occupational mobility
intergenerational mobility
JEL: 
J62
N7
N9
R1
R12
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size
1.52 MB





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.