The Evolution of Global Labor Markets

今天的媒体充斥着关于全球经济村的言论，政治领导人谈论世界竞争力，美国人担心生产力和生活水平的下降。经济学家们开始称这一过程为趋同，对二战后经历的理论和实证分析也蓬勃发展。然而，人们常常忘记，这种经济趋同的过程有着非常悠久的历史。它始于19世纪的两个重要经济事件；新大陆资源的发现和工业革命这两件事都造成了经济分歧：目前经合发组织工业化俱乐部成员国之间的工资、生活水平和人均收入差距急剧扩大。然而，在19世纪50年代之后，这种分化之后是一个多世纪的趋同，贫穷国家的增长速度快于富裕国家。因此，自20世纪50年代以来所观察到的情况，自上世纪中叶以来一直在发生。这个趋同的过程断断续续地发生，这个项目的一个主要目标是确定哪些片段经历了趋同，以及为什么。第二个主要目标是揭示导致趋同的力量。这将包括国际劳动力迁移、国际资本流动、国际贸易、技能形成和技术进步。战争、政策干预和其他有利于或抑制要素流动和贸易的事件也可能在形成这些趋同背后的力量方面发挥了核心作用。更好地理解这些历史力量，将为未来全球经济增长的进程提供有用的见解。

The media is filled today with reference to the global economic village, political leaders talk in terms of world competitiveness, and Americans fear the loss of productivity and living standards. Economists have come to call this process convergence, and theory and empirical analysis on post World War II experience with it have flourished. It is often forgotten, however, that this process of economic convergence has a very long history. It starts in the 19th century following two important economic events; the discovery New World resources and the industrial revolution. Both of these events created economic divergence: wage, standard of living and per capita income gaps between members of the current OECD industrialized club increased sharply. After the 1850's, however, this divergence was followed by more than a century of convergence when poor countries grew faster than rich countries. What has been observed since the 1950s, therefore, has been going on since the middle of the last century. This process of convergence took place in fits and starts, and one major goal of this project is to identify which episodes underwent convergence and why. A second major objective is to uncover the forces which caused convergence. These would include international labor migrations, international capital flows, international trade, skill formation, and technological advance. War, policy intervention, and other events favoring or suppressing factor flows and trade are also likely to have played a central role in shaping those forces underlying the convergence. A better understanding of these historical forces should provide useful insights about the course of future world- wide economic growth.