despite the old controversy regarding the thesis of the immiseration of the working class (e.g. Kucynski 1942-46).
If the above is the state of art today, why is it that real wages in the non-agricultural sector kept declining in the Philippines during the Macros and even through the Aquino regimes, despite a slow, yet steady increase in real per capita income? Are the basic figures consistent? If not, why not?
One may speculate in this regard that in the period shortly before and after the beginning of industrialisation, real wages may be held more or less constant. Such, in fact, was the case in Japan during the second half of the nineteenth century (Saito 1996). The statistical records of the West also reveal that the levels of real wages went upward only at a very modest speed (if at all) for about half a century after 1820 (Mitchell 1975, pp. 71-72 and 388-90; see Figure 6). An important side story, often concealed from statistics, is that wage earners in old days may have been entitled to some non-pecuniary compensations. (6) Moreover, the records of money wages may have registered only institutionally guaranteed minimum levels, which were updated only with long time lags. Taking these and other circumstances into consideration, it may become possible to resolve the Filipino puzzle.
Technological Change in Manufacturing
Technological progress has been a favourite subject of economists and economic historians. Whereas macro statistics do not supply sufficient information as to the exact nature of changes in production technology and of innovation processes, they nonetheless record the de facto locus of such changes and their impacts on the structure of the economy. For this purpose, concepts like labour productivity (Y/L) and capital intensity (K/L) play a very important role (where L stands for labour input). Normally one expects to find that higher levels of Y/L is accompanied by ever-rising values of K/L. It is surprising and quite perplexing, therefore, for one to find that the growth of the former in Thailand went hand in hand with a declining (albeit at a slow rate) trend of the former over a substantially long period after WWII (Shintani 1993, pp. 200, 204, 206; see Figure 7). How does one interpret such a finding as this? Does he/she
