Although non-monetary benefits remain an important component of most workers’ wages in today's industrial economies, development economists and economic historians tend to view such payments as a remnant of older, obsolete labour regimes. But when in-kind wages are assumed to be exploitative, an outcome of market inefficiencies, or simply the result of limited supply of coinage, their actual economic functions can be obscured. Once we drop the constraints imposed by such assumptions and look at the historical evidence, we are forced to confront the possibility that workers actually used them to their advantage. In this article, I analyse how in-kind wages functioned in certain historical contexts, and conclude that available explanations are far too limited. As the historical cases studied show, the different forms of in-kind payments must be examined because those forms – not just overall wage levels – helped determine labour supply, social and occupational mobility, and even capital formation. The goods and services that made up in-kind payments also provide a fuller understanding of gender wage gaps. Non-monetary wages gave workers options that cash wages did not, and so created and reproduced fundamental inequalities among different groups.

中文翻译：

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实物工资：了解工人应对通货膨胀和贫困的策略


尽管在当今的工业经济体中，非货币福利仍然是大多数工人工资的重要组成部分，但发展经济学家和经济历史学家倾向于将这种福利视为旧的、过时的劳动制度的残余。但是，当实物工资被假定为剥削性、市场效率低下的结果，或者仅仅是铸币供应有限的结果时，它们的实际经济功能就会被掩盖。一旦我们放下这些假设所施加的限制，看看历史证据，我们就被迫面对工人实际上利用它们来为自己谋取利益的可能性。在本文中，我分析了实物工资在某些历史背景下是如何运作的，并得出结论，可用的解释太有限了。正如所研究的历史案例所表明的那样，必须审查不同形式的实物支付，因为这些形式——不仅仅是整体工资水平——有助于决定劳动力供应、社会和职业流动性，甚至资本形成。构成实物支付的商品和服务也有助于更全面地了解性别工资差距。非货币工资为工人提供了现金工资所没有的选择，因此在不同群体之间造成并复制了根本性的不平等。