Economic History Association

Comments on Dye, Huck, and SicsicAuthor(s): Gregory ClarkSource: The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 53, No. 2 (Jun., 1993), pp. 408-410Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Economic History AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2123009 .

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408 Summaries of Dissertations

comprehensiveness of the information contained in the Dow records. But Levenstein could make a major breakthrough if she were able, in this way, to gauge the significance of innovation in the handling of information, and of better management, within the firm in accounting for productivity growth over time. Although the job of relating produc- tivity change to changes in information systems is probably more subtle and daunting than William Lazonick and Thomas Brush's work on the effects of discrete decisions to increase the intensity of labor in cotton textile mills, I would point to their path-breaking study as an example of what I have in mind, and as a place to begin. There is the potential here for substantially advancing our understanding of from whence technical change comes. Levenstein has written an excellent thesis, and it will be an even better book.

KENNETH L. SOKOLOFF, University of California, Los Angeles

Comments on Dye, Huck, and Sicsic

The presenters of the "non-American" dissertations all had as their principal adviser a noted economic historian: Jeffrey Williamson, Joel Mokyr, and Larry Neal. And though the theses are all fully independent products, to a surprising degree they reflect the personalities and aesthetics of those advisers. Unlike many of us, these students paid attention and learned from their advisers. Sometimes this was useful.

Pierre Sicsic, in his study of labor markets in nineteenth-century France, delivers a tight, disciplined product. The thesis growls with energy. He announces he will go from A to B, he goes from A to B, and, by God, there is no way you can deny that he is at B. But he doesn't linger there. No, he is off to the next project, probably with a quick game of tennis in between. This thesis should have "Type A" stamped on the cover.

You want a literature summary? You want context? He has it: pages 1 to 7. You want a hypothesis? He has three: he does wage gaps, he does migration, he does economies of scale. Yet there are only 100 pages of actual text in the thesis. You want data? No problem. He gives you all of them in the tables of the thesis. You wonder about statistical issues in testing the hypotheses? He has the solutions. It's clear, it's tight, it's convincing. It's a model thesis. The only problem is, however, that it's the MIT model.

For there is a cost for this drive and precision. The cost for this ride on the TGV is that when I get to B, even though I am firmly, indubitably at B, I am not sure that B was a well-chosen destination. Maybe we should have lingered over breakfast and gotten a little perspective on the journey. Sicsic's first question, for example, is whether the reluctance of the peasantry to move to the city impeded French industrialization in the nineteenth century. His test is to measure the wage gap between the country and the city. The answer very clearly is that the wage gap was small, surprisingly small. This result is not without some interest. But Williamson has already shown that even where, as in England, the wage gap between town and country was large, the effects on overall income per capita would have to be small. The crucial determinants of efficiency are not how well labor is allocated between industry and agriculture, but the efficiency of those sectors. So Sicsic's findings are interesting more as a finding about labor market functioning than about economic development. But he does not linger to explore these issues.

Instead, he next tests whether migration was responsive to wage differences. It was. He concludes that, had France industrialized more rapidly, the wage gap between city and country would not have widened dramatically. But again my feeling is that this focus on the rate of industrialization in economic development is misplaced, an

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Summaries of Dissertations 409

emphasis reflecting an earlier and now discredited paradigm of what determined the rate of economic growth.

Finally, Sicsic considers whether industrialization was impeded by the small size of French firms. He, unlike John Nye, finds evidence of economies of scale in French industry in the nineteenth century. But he has already nicely demonstrated that, controlling for the production structure, French firms were not particularly small. No matter what were the returns to scale, France was not particularly disadvantaged. Thus, returns to scale can explain little of the gap in income per capita between France and England in the nineteenth century, whatever they are. Thus, my one criticism of this thesis is that the energy and talent displayed in it might have found better employment. Make no mistake, this is an excellent thesis. But we ask most of those who have most to give.

Paul Huck, in contrast, produces a more leisurely, a more historical, and a more idiosyncratic product. He has got a point to make, but there is no need to rush it. First he surveys the scene; he locates us in the landscape. We are going from A to B, but we need to know why B and why now. Indeed, his survey of the Industrial Revolution standard of living debate takes all of 130 pages. He considers the conceptual issues, wages, consumption, heights, and mortality. He tussles a little with Peter Lindert and Jeffrey Williamson, the stalwarts of optimism, without much effect. Finally, just when Sicsic would be wrapping things up, Huck settles to his task, which is to infer living standards from infant mortality.

To do this he has gathered from the archives evidence on infant mortality rates in nine parishes from 1813 to 1836, a time of supposed rapid increase in living standards. He extends this series with evidence from the equivalent registration districts from 1838 to 1846. The raw averages are clear. There is no sign of a decline in infant mortality between 1813 and 1846 in those parishes. How could this happen if there was a general increase in living standards? It is well known that infant mortality is influenced by variables other than the material standard of living, such as infant feeding practices and population density. To control for these effects Huck runs a cross-sectional regression for 1851 in which he examines the effects of such factors as population density on infant mortality. The important determinants of infant mortality in the cross section are population density, climate, literacy, and the extent of breast feeding. Using the estimated effects of these factors in cross section, Huck corrects the raw mortality data in his parishes from 1813 to 1846 for changes in the environment and child-rearing practices. There is still no sign of declining infant mortality.

I approached this thesis with skepticism. But in the end I can find little fault with what was done. And I think that Huck can strengthen his results. Given the variation from parish to parish and year to year in infant mortality, adding even a few more parishes to his sample would be helpful. Also, giving a prediction of how much decline in infant mortality we should expect if we believe, for example, Lindert and Williamson, would again give an idea of how likely it is that Huck's results are just a product of random variation.'

Alan Dye's thesis reminded me very much of his adviser, Larry Neal. It is subtle, understated, interesting. You are never quite sure what is there. Sometimes it mumbles a little. I delayed reading this thesis for as long as possible, daunted by its title: "Tropical Technology and Mass Production: The Expansion of Cuban Sugar Mills, 1899-1929." How was I going to digest this beast?

The thesis opens with a description of sugar production in Cuba from 1883 on. We

l As a footnote let me comment that this thesis sported a stylistic innovation that I detested. It dispensed with footnotes, instead providing all the subsidiary material in the text. In contrast, Andrew Rutten made masterful and praiseworthy use in his thesis of 406 footnotes in only 131 pages.

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410 Summaries of Dissertations

seem to be on a journey. Where we are going is not so clear, but the landscape is interesting. We trudge along happily enough through the canefields. At about page 40, when the author seems about to plunge into a jaunty 50-page disquisition on economies of scale in sugar crushing, we begin to get hints that perhaps, just possibly, there may be more general issues at stake here. Could it be that this thesis is not really about sugar, is not really about Cuba, but is about Alfred Chandler, Oliver Williamson, and the rise of modem capitalism? But we then plunge on through the undergrowth for another 70 or so pages before we glimpse Chandler and Williamson-or is it really them?-behind some bushes.

Sugar cane cannot be cut and stocked. It must flow continually from the field to the mill. Dye shows, furthermore, that most of the economies of scale in milling sugar are gained not from the scale of the milling machinery, but from avoiding downtime in larger mills by diversifying supplies. As coordination is the key, we would expect that market relations between the stages of production would end. For efficient coordination requires that each sugar field be linked to the mills by railroads and that deliveries be made on a strict schedule. We have here lock-in, sunk costs, and possibilities for opportunism: we must have strict vertical integration.

But we do not get it in the sugar industry. Most sugar cane was grown and cut by subcontractors in 1930. And the percentage of cane supplied by subcontractors increased from 1905 to 1930. Dye also finds that the rate paid for sugar cane by the same company differed over time and between suppliers. There was plenty of room for haggling. Yet the prediction of the Chandler-Williamson view is that with bilateral monopolies such as these, negotiation and contract specification costs should force integration.

Why does complete integration not occur? Dye speculates about risk sharing and about the ability of mills to exploit dependent subcontractors. This is all interesting but inconclusive. Dye does not make much of the issue, however, and we are soon off through the canefields again. In the last chapter we again catch sight of Chandler and Williamson. Or do we? There we learn that the sugar industry confirms the Williamson model. Yet that model is used to explain the decline of subcontracting in United States manufacturing just when it was on the rise in Cuban sugar.

At the end, despite the enormous scholarship and care of the author, despite the rich description of the technology and institutions of the industry, despite the econometric proficiency, I was not sure what we had discovered. But I was convinced that the author had uncovered from the archives much that was illuminating about the industry, and I am hopeful that there is indeed more to sugar milling than milling sugar.

GREGORY CLARK, University of California, Davis

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