Volume 4, No. 1 (Spring 2001)
Margo concludes what Austrian economists have surmised all along, namely that the rise in real wages during this period very closely approximated the rise in worker productivity (both grew about 1 percent a year). The major bottom-line conclusions arising from Margo’s exercise are congenial with Austrian—and, for that matter, neoclassical—economic theory, and they generally are carried out thoroughly and with apparent objectivity and care. Nonetheless, the work reinforces Austrian suspicions about excessive reliance on statistics derived from aggregating data from multiple economic agents.