ABSTRACT
An important question has recently been posed by Hatton and Williamson (1992a) and O’Rourke, Taylor and Williamson (1993). There is evidence that European emigration rates followed a bell-shaped curve; emigration rates from Europe rose, but as industrialization in due course delivered benefits to European workers the rate peaked, then fell. Were real wages in sending and receiving economies converging in the years before the First World War as part of this process?
