Has something survived ?
Transfers and analogies at work in Henry L. Moore's work on wages

Philippe Le Gall, GRESE

Résumé. La construction par Henry L. Moore de son "économie statistique" l'a conduit à rechercher et à utiliser des méthodes statistiques développées dans le cadre de la biométrie. Ce papier se propose d'analyser les conséquences de ces transferts de méthodes : peuvent-ils être considérés comme neutres ou ont-ils exercé une influence sur le contenu de ses travaux théoriques ? L'étude sera menée sur la base du premier ouvrage de Moore (1911) qui, d'un point de vue méthodologique, inaugure l'approche économétrique sur la base de méthodes développées en biométrie et, d'un point de vue théorique, contient une détermination des salaires basée sur un examen des caractéristiques biologiques des salariés. Ce papier tente donc de savoir dans quelle mesure cette théorie est le fruit des transferts méthodologiques opérés par Moore.
Mots clés : Histoire de l'Econométrie, économie du travail.

Abstract. The purpose of this paper is to focus on Henry L. Moore's transfers from the natural sciences that enabled him to shape statistical economics. This construction led him to search statistical methods that could help him to bridge the data-theory gap, and I should like to analyze the consequences of these transfers : were they neutral or did they affect the very content of his theoretical work ? Were the tools he imported carrying some "baggage" that were at the same time transferred in economics and that contributed to reshape Moore's economic theory ? Otherwise stated, has something survived in the recipient field, and if such is the case, what was it ? I shall here exclusively focus on his work on wages (Moore 1911) in which he first practiced statistical economics with the help of British mathematical statistics devised by biometricians. The book contains an "efficiency theory of wages" that was an attempt to link biological characteristics of workers to the structure of wages. Was it prompted by the work of Galton and Pearson on biometric distributions of characters and attributes, and was this theory a consequence of Moore's transfer of the Bristish techniques ?.
Keywords : History of Econometrics, labor economics.

JEL Classification : B23, J30.