A re-examination of historical real daily wages in England: 1260-1994

We examine historical data of real daily wages in England for the time period 1260-1994 by means of new statistical techniques developed for estimating and testing fractional integration. The results show that when using the whole dataset, the unit-root null hypothesis cannot be rejected. If the data start after the First Industrial Revolution (FIR, 1712), this hypothesis is sometimes rejected, while starting after the Second Industrial Revolution (SIR, 1875), the unit root is rejected in favour of higher orders of integration, implying that the degree of dependence between the observations has substantially increased over time. Moreover, in the presence of shocks, stronger policy actions must be required, especially after SIR, to bring the variable back to its original level.