Migration and business cycles

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1736236210

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-111544

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Jerome, Harry

Title:: Migration and business cycles

Place of publication:: New York

Publisher:: National Bureau of Economic Research

Year of publication:: 1926

Scope:: 256 S.

Digitisation:: 2020

Collection:: Economics Books

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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter V. The pre-war quarter century : 1890-1914

Collection:: Economics Books

08 MIGRATION AND BUSINESS CYCLES In Chart 15 we have the relation of factory employment to male immigration in the three years 1893 to 1895 presented in four dif- ferent ways. These four charts, though based on the same fun- damental data, do not look closely similar nor do they convey the same Impression. In Fig. A, the series are expressed as percentage deviations from their computed trends. The impression received from this section of the chart is that fluctuations in employment are relatively minor as compared with those of immigration. This is literally correct, but the resulting impression is misleading, for the chart conveys no suggestion of the fact that a one per cent fluctuation in employment involves a much larger number of men than a one per cent change in immigration. Nor is it easy to determine from Fig. A whether the fluctuations of the two series are substantially similar in timing and direction. Ease of comparison in timing and direction of move- ment is obtained by presentation in the form shown in Fg. B; that is, with the data expressed as deviations from their trends measured in terms of the typical deviation of each respective series. This latter method, which has been used in several of the charts in this book, has the distinct advantage of throwing the curves close together and thus facilitating comparison of their changes in direc- tion, but, to avoid false impressions, it should be noted that the numerical significance of a given change is almost entirely concealed. On such a curve the change in immigration may appear exactly equal to that in employment, but we cannot tell from the curve whether the number of men represented by the change in employ- ment is equal to the number affected by the change in immigration or, possibly, one hundred times as great. For reasons which will be more obvious as we note the many possible bases of comparison, it is practically impossible to select scales which will give a precise and unquestionably true impression of the relative numerical importance of the changes in employment and immigration. However, if we are turning our attention to the relation of changes in the volume of employment and immigration, in terms of the number of persons affected, rather than to the timing and direction of such changes, then a more accurate impres- sion is probably obtained by the use of charts similar to those found in Fig. C and Fig. D of Chart 15. In Fig. C the fluctuations in employment are emphasized by the use of a larger scale than that used for immigration, so that a devia- tion of one per cent in employment appears as great as a ten per

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