Migrations saisonnieres de mai n-d'oeuvre Le cas de la France en 1860

In the 1860's in France, firms often stopped their production in summer. This paper tests the hypothesis that it can be partially explained by worker mobility between industry and agriculture during summer. Formally, labour supply is modelled as an arbitrage by workers between the two types of work and labour demand as a reaction by firms against the quits of their workers. We show that firms may set higher wages in summer depending on their adjustment costs on other production inputs. The model is estimated by alternative methods, non linear least squares and non linear probit.