This paper uses a financial and operational data set of Canadian gold mines between 1939 and 1945 to analyse the efficacy of two government labour market policies implemented in World War II. An early war policy designated the gold mining industry as vital for the war effort to boost gold output in order to purchase foreign reserves. The late war policy resulted in restrictions that prevented labour movement into and between the mines. We find that the first policy is largely ineffective in its goal. Although the market allocated labour to the lowest cost producers, the policy caused only a modest increase in gold output. To evaluate the second policy, we estimate the cost curves of the individual mines. The results indicate an inefficient allocation of labour across mines. The gold mining industry experiences operating costs 22% higher than with efficient labour allocation during this late war period. The estimated efficiency loss to the industry is nearly $58.4 million 1940 Canadian dollars.

中文翻译：

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劳工政策对第二次世界大战中加拿大金矿的影响

本文使用1939年至1945年之间加拿大金矿的财务和运营数据集来分析第二次世界大战中实施的两项政府劳动力市场政策的有效性。早期的战争政策将黄金开采业确定为战争努力以增加黄金产量以购买外汇储备的关键。战争后期的政策导致限制，阻止了工人进出矿场和在矿场之间移动。我们发现，第一个政策在其目标上很大程度上无效。尽管市场将劳动力分配给成本最低的生产者，但该政策仅导致金矿产量适度增加。为了评估第二项政策，我们估算了各个矿山的成本曲线。结果表明，各个矿场之间的劳动分配效率低下。在战争后期，黄金开采业的运营成本比有效分配劳动力高出22％。1940年加元，该行业的效率损失估计接近5840万美元。