Modernization in Progress: Part-Year Operation, Mechanization, and Labor Force Composition in Late Imperial Russia
利用1894年俄罗斯帝国所有制造企业的数据，研究了工厂年度运营天数与机械化、城市化、劳动力构成及生产率的关系，发现运营天数多的工厂更现代化且更可能存活。
This paper investigates part-year factory operation, a common but understudied dimension of industrializing economies, in a prototypical late-industrializing setting that offers rich factory-level data: Imperial Russia. Newly compiled data provides detailed descriptions of all Russian manufacturing firms operating in 1894 and shows that factories operating a greater number of annual working days were more mechanized, more urban, more likely to employ women and children, more productive, and more likely to survive. Rather than arguing that part-year operation demonstrated Russia’s uniquely inexorable backwardness, we stress operating time’s relationship to fundamental drivers of growth, including urbanization, geography, and institutions.