Title: Mediterranean labor markets in the first age of globalization
Description: "Scholars have studied the 19th century's unprecedented labor flows in global and specific country contexts, but have lacked a comprehensive analysis of the world's old economic core, the Mediterranean. This work provides answers to important questions, such as: If the Mediterranean labor market really was integrated, then why did globalization affect the Western and Eastern Mediterranean so differently? Why did wage inequality rise in the East while it fell in the rest of the labor-abundant periphery? More broadly, was low emigration from Iberia and the East to blame for the Mediterranean's failed integration with the fast-expanding global economy? This ground-breaking research relates these questions to ongoing historical debates on the intensity of intra-Mediterranean integration in goods and labor, to current heated debates on North African emigration to Europe, and to discussions on European economic integration more generally. "--

"Why did the Mediterranean not engage with an unprecedented age of globalization? Clear economic analysis shows protective trade policy, poverty, and overpopulation held migration and so the region's global integration back. Most countries reacted to the globalization of commodity markets with tariff hikes, experiencing declining terms of trade and slower wage growth relative to open economies. Overpopulation kept unskilled wages low and wage gaps wide. The emigration of unskilled labor was not high enough to raise domestic unskilled wages, and thereby reduce domestic inequality. Further, the well-documented emigration from the northern Mediterranean to the New World was not high enough to facilitate the region's integration with the global labor market. Emigration from the British Mediterranean, Syria, and North Africa was high enough, but the countries themselves comprised too small a part of the Mediterranean for the region to globally integrate in aggregate. The result: income inequality and relative economic decline. There are lessons for today's debate on migration"--
Subjects: Emigration and immigration, Labor market, Wages, Migrant labor, Globalization, Mediterranean region, history, Migrant workers, BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Economic History, BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Labor, BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Economics / Comparative, BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / International / Economics
Places: Mediterranean Region