Research

Current Working Papers

1. Meaningful Work in Historical Perspective, University of Oxford Economic and Social History Working Papers, No. 222, October 2025.
   This paper will appear as a chapter in Work Meaning and Motivation, edited by Milena Nikolova, forthcoming in 2026.

2. Women's Wages and Job Quality in the 1920s United States, University of Oxford Economic and Social History Working Papers, No. 223, October 2025, with Vincent Delabastita and Meredith Paker.

3. What is Technological Unemployment?, University of Oxford Economic and Social History Working Papers, No. 218, March 2025, with Anselm Küsters. 

4. Where is Place in the History of Work? Worksites, Workspaces, and the Home-Work Nexus, University of Oxford Economic and Social History Working Papers, No. 213, October 2024, with Jane Whittle. Revise and resubmit, Explorations in Economic History.

5. The Past and Future of Work: How History can Inform the Age of Automation, CESifo Working Papers, No. 10766, November 2023, with Hillary Vipond. 

Historical Job Quality Indicators
The latest version of the HJQI codebook is published alongside the paper "Job quality in history" in the European Review of Economic History.
From January 2023 to October 2024 I led the Work and Wellbeing in History project funded by the Center for Advanced Study at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

Published:

1. "Job quality in history", Advance Access, European Review of Economic History.
   Earlier, ungated working paper version.
   Note that the HJQI Codebook in the published version differs from the earlier working paper version.

2. "Technological Unemployment in the British Industrial Revolution: The Destruction of Hand Spinning", Forthcoming in February 2026, Past & Present.

3. "Living Standards and Development Paths: Factory Systems and Job Quality during US Industrialization, 1790–1840", International Review of Social History 70 (2025): 193–226 . (Open Access)

4. "Gender Equality, Growth, and How a Technological Trap Destroyed Female Work", Economic History of Developing Regions 36 (2021): 428–438, with Jane Humphries.
   Ungated working paper version.

5.  "Losing the Thread: A Response to Robert Allen", Economic History Review 73 (2020): 1137–1152, with Jane Humphries.
   An extended working paper (ungated) is also available:
   "Wages at the Wheel: Were Spinners Part of the High Wage Economy?", University of Oxford Economic and Social History Working Papers, No. 174.

6. "Spinning the Industrial Revolution", Economic History Review 72 (2019): 126–155, with Jane Humphries.
   Ungated working paper version.
   
   

PhD Thesis: Technological Change and Work
Abstract
Conclusion
Summary published in the European Review of Economic History (December 2023)

Image: Quarry Bank Mill, Styal, Cheshire, UK
© Ben Schneider 2021–2025