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We investigate a structural model of demographic-economic interactions for England during 1570 to 1850. We estimate that the annual rate of population growth consistent with constant real wages was 0.4% before 1760 but 1.5% thereafter. We find that exogenous shocks increased population growth dramatically in the early decades of the Industrial Revolution. Simulations of our model show that if these demographic shocks had occurred before the Industrial Revolution the impact on real wages would have been catastrophic and that these shocks were largely responsible for very slow growth of real wages during the Industrial Revolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper reviews the implications of the EU–UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) for the control of subsidies. Controls will be less strict than under the EU state aid regime but tighter than with no deal and WTO rules. A subsidy control authority will be established by the UK which will oversee the application of broad principles set out in the TCA. A well-designed authority would help to prevent a repeat of the UK experience in the 1970s and 1980s, when subsidies were detrimental to economic performance. Regrettably, however, the government has decided to adopt a politicized approach to subsidy policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I examine the implications of technological change for productivity, real wages and factor shares during the industrial revolution using recently available data. This shows that real GDP per worker grew faster than real consumption earnings but labour's share of national income changed little as real product wages grew at a similar rate to labour productivity in the medium term. The period saw modest total factor productivity growth which limited the growth both of real wages and of labour productivity. Economists looking for an historical example of rapid labour-saving technological progress having a seriously adverse impact on labour's share must look elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at the impact on productivity of general-purpose technologies such as steam, electricity, and ICT. It finds they had big effects but only with a lag which was substantial in the first two cases. The experience of the First Industrial Revolution is explored and it is found that this is not a template for a general-purpose technology having a major adverse effect on workers' living standards. The essence of that industrial revolution was not rapid productivity growth in the short run, but the 'invention of a new method of invention' which increased technological progress in the long run. Since artificial intelligence is potentially a general-purpose technology that raises the productivity of research and development, it may be the basis for a Fourth Industrial Revolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper updates the classic growth accounting research of the early 1980s taking account of improved data that has subsequently become available. The picture of long‐run growth which results from incorporating many revisions is considerably different. The long‐run path of productivity growth is now that of a roller‐coaster with twin peaks in the third quarters of the 19th and 20th centuries rather than a U‐shape. Productivity growth appears to have been very slow to accelerate in the Industrial Revolution, the notion of an Edwardian climacteric is not persuasive and the current productivity slowdown stands out as unprecedented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is now a large volume of growth accounting estimates covering the long run experience of advanced countries. However, most of the studies in economic history are not based on state‐of‐the‐art methods. There is a trade‐off between maintaining international comparability and achieving the best results for individual countries. A one‐size‐fits‐all approach will not always do justice to the variety of historical experiences since the conventional assumptions may sometimes be inappropriate. Nevertheless, growth‐accounting studies have produced some eye‐catching results which provide food for thought both for economic historians and for growth economists. These include (1) the finding that TFP growth was comparatively slow during the First Industrial Revolution, (2) Solow's famous conclusion that TFP growth accounted for 7/8ths of American labour‐productivity growth was atypical, (3) the impact of new general‐purpose technologies on growth typically takes a long time to materialize, ICT being the notable exception and (4) that capital‐deepening was much more important relative to TFP growth in east Asian than in western European catch‐up growth. Growth accounting is undoubtedly a valuable item in the cliometrician's toolkit. Nonetheless, we anticipate the introduction of more sophisticated methods and look forward to progress in understanding what explains marked differences in TFP performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We re-examine the long-run geographical development of US manufacturing industries using recent advances in spatial concentration measures. We construct spatially weighted indices of the geographical concentration between 1880 and 2007 taking into account industrial structure and checkerboard problem. New results emerge. Average spatial concentration was much lower in the late 20th than in the late 19th century, and it was the outcome of a continuing reduction over time. Spatial concentration did not increase in the early 20th century but declined, and we find no inverted-U shape pattern of long-run spatial concentration. The persistent tendency to greater spatial dispersion was characteristic of most industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research relating to productivity growth during the British industrial revolution is reviewed. This confirms that there was a gradual acceleration rather than a 'take‐off'. The explanation for the speeding‐up of technological progress remains controversial but the evidence base has improved considerably. In the face of a surge in population growth, slow growth of real wages during the industrial revolution may be seen as a good outcome which was underpinned by improved growth potential. Slow total factor productivity growth from the 1870s suggests that British technological capabilities at the end of the industrial revolution were still quite limited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper re-examines UK productivity growth in the decades before World War I using a new dataset compiled by the Bank of England. We find that the productivity slowdown of the early twentieth century was quite modest and does not deserve to be called a climacteric. A more serious slowdown in labour productivity growth occurred in the 1870s. Neither of these episodes should be regarded as a precedent for the current severe deterioration in UK productivity performance. Nor should a late-Victorian productivity slowdown be attributed to the end of the steam age despite the popularity of this belief. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We estimate trend UK labour productivity growth using a Hodrick-Prescott filter method. We use the results to compare downturns where the economy fell below its pre-existing trend. We find that the current productivity slowdown has resulted in productivity being 19.7 per cent below the pre-2008 trend path in 2018. This is nearly double the previous worst productivity shortfall ten years after the start of a downturn. On this criterion the slowdown is unprecedented in the past 250 years. We conjecture that this reflects a combination of adverse circumstances, namely, a financial crisis, a weakening impact of ICT and impending Brexit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the role of industrial structure in labour productivity growth in manufacturing in US cities during the 'second industrial revolution'. We find that initially greater specialization was associated with faster subsequent productivity growth but that only the very high levels of diversity which obtained in some very large cities had a positive correlation. We interpret our results as demonstrating the existence of dynamic Marshallian externalities. The impact of industrial specialization in our sample of US cities after 1890 is found to have raised the level of labour productivity in manufacturing by about 4 per cent by 1920. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional estimates suggest that the 2007–2009 financial crisis reduced UK potential output by 3.8–7.5% of GDP. This implied a need for fiscal tightening as the structural budget deficit had increased considerably. The austerity that followed led to the rise of UKIP, the EU referendum and the vote for Brexit. Brexit will reduce potential output by somewhere between 3.9 and 8.7% of GDP. Thus, it can be argued that the total fall in UK potential output due to the banking crisis is between 7.7 and 16.2% of GDP—approximately double the conventional estimate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We develop new aggregate total factor productivity (TFP) growth estimates for the USA between 1899 and 1941, and sectoral estimates at the most disaggregated level so far, 38 industries. We include hard-to-measure services, and a refined measure of sectoral labour quality growth. The resulting data set supersedes Kendrick (1961), showing TFP growth lower than previously thought, broadly based across industries, and strongly variant intertemporally. The four 'great inventions' that Gordon (2016) highlighted were important but less dominant in TFP growth than their predecessors in the British industrial revolution. The findings also make it unlikely the 1930s had the twentieth century's highest TFP growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On average, UK productivity performance in the decades leading up to the financial crisis was quite disappointing. Joining the EU was not to blame. Indeed, EU membership, which was an integral part of the Thatcher reform programme, had a significant positive impact. Over the long run, UK supply-side policies have been badly designed in various different ways. These design faults have not been the result of constraints imposed by EU membership but rather the consequence of domestic government failure. There is no reason to think that EU exit will lead, either directly or indirectly, to improvements in UK productivity outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews UK industrial policy in the context of Brexit and weak productivity performance. It considers proposals made in a recent White Paper as well as more general arguments for reform now that the 'post‐Thatcher consensus' has ended. The desirability of improving horizontal policies in the areas of innovation, infrastructure and skills is noted. In the event of a hard Brexit, there would be an opportunity to return to 1970s‐style selective industrial policies and public‐interest‐based competition policy. An advantage of a soft Brexit is that it would preclude interventionism of this kind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the paradoxical co-existence of a productivity slowdown and exciting new technologies. Several potential explanations are reviewed. It is argued that while some are unpersuasive it is too soon to know which carry the most weight. However, the slowdown does not appear to be an artefact of the data. A key, hotly disputed, issue is the future economic impact of today's technological progress. As with previous general purpose technologies, it is likely that there will be powerful effects but only with a lag. This has the implication that while the slowdown is real it is not necessarily permanent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyse TFP growth in the US business sector using a basic unobserved component model where trend growth follows a random walk and the noise is a first order autoregression. This is fitted using a Kalman-filter methodology. We find that trend TFP growth has declined steadily from 1.5 to 1.0 per cent per year over the past 50 years. Nevertheless, recent trends are not a good guide to actual medium-term TFP growth. This exhibits substantial variations and is quite unpredictable. Techno-optimists should not give best to productivity pessimists simply because recent TFP growth has been weak. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers future European growth prospects in the light of a new productivity paradox, namely, the co-existence of a productivity slowdown and exciting new technologies. Several potential explanations are reviewed. It is argued that while some are unpersuasive it is too soon to be sure which carry the most weight. This has the implication that while the slowdown is real, it is not necessarily permanent. A key, hotly disputed issue is the future economic impact of technological progress on which forecasts differ dramatically. Supply-side reform could have a strong positive effect, but this is not likely to happen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a time-series analysis of recent annual estimates of real GDP and industrial output covering 1270–1913. We show that growth can be regarded as a segmented trend-stationary process. On this basis, we find that trend growth of real GDP per person was zero prior to the 1660s but then experienced two significant accelerations, pre- and post-industrial revolution. We also find that the hallmark of the industrial revolution is a substantial increase in the trend rate of growth of industrial output rather than being an episode of difference stationary growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the author talks about the industrial strategy published by the Great Britain's government that will bridge the gap between its productive companies, industries, places and people.

Brexit implies that the UK may move to different rules to control state aid, although changes will be minimal if it remains within the EEA and could be minor in the event of an EU/UK trade agreement. With a 'hard' Brexit, there could be much greater scope for selective industrial policy and that might be seductive to a government intent on a new industrial strategy. In this case, however, the risks of 'government failure' are considerable and it would be desirable to devise an institutional framework that strictly limits the scope for politicians to exercise discretion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The remedies provided in Prosperity and Justice: a Plan for the New Economy are less convincing than its diagnosis. It entails a substantial shift back towards selective industrial policies and resource allocation by the state rather than the market, with the ambition of changing the structure of the economy. Many economists are likely to be sceptical of some of the arguments put forward in the report. An obvious issue is the huge policy discretion to be given to government without effective constraints, and the significance of government failure is overlooked. It is a triumph of hope over experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines contrasting experiences of the United Kingdom in addressing high public debt to GDP ratios following major wars. A clear message is that interest rate / growth rate differentials were more important than primary budget surpluses for the different outcomes. The debt to GDP ratio fell very rapidly under financial repression following the Second World War but remained stubbornly high despite large budget surpluses with price deflation after the First World War. Implications for policymakers today are that averting price deflation is a high priority and that supply-side policies that raise growth could play an important part in debt reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews some of the major claims in Robert Gordon's Rise and Fall of American Growth. His argument that growth of conventional real GDP per person is well below that of real living standards is accepted. It is shown that adding an imputation to GDP for reductions in mortality raises growth substantially, especially between 1929 and 1950. Gordon is also right that total factor productivity growth peaked in the second and third quarters of the twentieth century but his claim that there was a 'great leap forward' in the 1940s, stimulated by World War 2, is not persuasive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relatively deep level of economic integration achieved by the European Union ( EU) has been highly successful in increasing trade for its members. Larger trade volumes have had positive effects on productivity levels. In the case of the United Kingdom the gain from joining the EU was probably around 10 per cent of GDP and this far exceeded any costs of membership, possibly by a ratio of seven to one. A major reason for this outcome was a significant increase in competition as protectionism was abandoned. The economic implications of Brexit are much less clear because there are many permutations of what it would entail. Future trade barriers rather than budgetary transfers are the main issue. Brexit could be quite costly if the UK left the single market and used its new policy space badly. Ironically, while Brexit clearly appeals to free traders, it could end up empowering protectionists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers developments in UK growth performance and supply-side policies since the 1980s. It argues that economic reforms made in the Thatcher years and consolidated under subsequent governments delivered improved pre-crisis growth outcomes helped by the information and communications technology (ICT) revolution and stronger competition in product markets. The new growth economics provided useful insights for policy-makers, some of which were partly heeded. Recently, as productivity growth has stalled, there has been a turn to 'soft' industrial policy and a fear that the future is one of secular stagnation. The former has made little difference and the latter is unlikely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines home bias in U.S. domestic trade in 1949 and 2007. We use a unique data set of 1949 carload waybill statistics produced by the Interstate Commerce Commission, and 2007 Commodity Flow Survey data. The results show that home bias was considerably smaller in 1949 than in 2007 and that home bias in 1949 was even negative for several commodities. We argue that the difference between the geographical distribution of the manufacturing activities in 1949 and that of 2007 is an important factor explaining the differences in the magnitudes of home-bias estimates in those years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self-defeating austerity entails "perverse effects" of fiscal consolidation such that fiscal indicators deteriorate. Inter alia, this depends on the size of the fiscal multiplier as Keynes (1933. The Means to Prosperity. London: Macmillan) underlined. We find that the governmentexpenditure multiplier was less than 1 in 1930s' Britain. Austerity was not self-defeating in the long run and even its initial impact probably did not raise the public debt-to-GDP ratio. In the later i930s, there was a "fiscal free lunch" in that deficit-financed government spending would have improved public finances enough to pay for the interest on the extra debt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the geography of cotton textiles in Britain in 1838 to test claims about why the industry came to be so heavily concentrated in Lancashire. Our analysis considers both first and second nature aspects of geography including the availability of water power, humidity, coal prices, market access, and sunk costs. We show that some of these characteristics have substantial explanatory power. Moreover, we exploit the change from water to steam power to show that the persistent effect of first nature characteristics on industry location can be explained by a combination of sunk costs and agglomeration effects. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

If the eurozone follows the precedent of the 1930s, it will not survive. The attractions of escaping from the gold standard then were massive and they point to a strategy of devalue and default for today's crisis countries. A fully federal Europe with a banking union and a fiscal union is the best solution, but it may be politically infeasible. However, it may be possible to underpin the euro with a ' Bretton Woods Compromise' that accepts some retreat from deep economic integration and provides greater policy space since exit entails risks of financial crisis that were not present 80 years ago. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report estimates of the fiscal multiplier for interwar Britain based on quarterly data, time-series econometrics, and “defense news.” We find that the government expenditure multiplier was in the range 0.3 to 0.8, much lower than previous estimates. The scope for a Keynesian solution to recession was less than is generally supposed. We find that rearmament gave a smaller boost to real GDP than previously claimed. Rearmament may, however, have had a larger impact than a temporary public works program of similar magnitude if private investment anticipated the need to add capacity to cope with future defense spending. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper considers 'unconventional' monetary stimulus and supply-side reform as ways to speed up UK recovery in the context of fiscal consolidation, drawing on the experience of the 1930s and 1980s. To imitate the 1930s, the inflation-targeting regime may need to be reformed to cut real interest rates, with land-use planning liberalised to 'crowd in' residential investment. To emulate the 1980s, supply-side reforms to improve productivity and to raise permanent income are required and possibilities in the areas of infrastructure, education and taxation are outlined. A problem common to all these options is that they are 'politically challenging'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates industrial location in the USA around the turn of the 20th century using a model which subsumes both market-potential and factor-endowment arguments. The results show that market potential was central to the existence of the manufacturing belt, that it mattered more than factor endowments, and that its impact came through interactions both with scale economies and with linkage effects. Market potential was generally much higher for states in the manufacturing belt. Natural advantage played a role in industrial location decisions in the late 19th century but its importance then faded away. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper considers the future of economic history in the context of its relationship with economics. It is argued that there are strong synergies between the two disciplines and that awareness of the economic past is an important resource for today's economists. Examples are given that illustrate these points. It is clear that the past has useful economics but the potential value of economic history to economics will only be realised if economic historians are fluent in economics and organise the presentation of their research findings with a view to addressing questions that matter from a policy perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents and discusses errors within the article "Were British railway companies well managed in the early twentieth century?" by Nicholas Crafts, Timothy Leunig, and Abay Mulatu, that was published in the November 2008 issue of the journal.

This paper considers the approach to technological change by quantitative economic historians. It suggests that there has been a continuing tension between what economics has to offer economic history by way of technical methods and what economic historians would like to find in economic models. In this area, there has been a danger that use of economic analysis would impoverish historical enquiry. Since the advent of new growth economics the situation has improved in the sense that there is now greater congruence between the hypotheses proposed by cliometricians and the resources that economics has available to them to investigate these ideas rigorously. Unfortunately, however, economists are still reluctant to learn from economic historians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper provides a survey of the Great Depression comprising both a narrative account and a detailed review of the empirical evidence, focusing especially on the experience of the United States. We examine the reasons for and flawed resolution of the American banking crisis, as well as the conduct of fiscal and monetary policy. We also consider the pivotal role of the gold standard in the international transmission of the slump and leaving gold as a route to recovery. Policy lessons for today from the Great Depression are discussed, as are some implications for macroeconomics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents the author's opinions on why economist Robert Solow's 1957 paper, which analyzed the sources of growth contributions from aggregate production function and claimed that labor productivity growth in the U.S. was from the contribution of total factor productivity, influenced the development of growth accounting. The author considers the importance that growth accounting has had in economic growth research. How growth accounting has been used by economic historians, how the generalizations about the sources of modern economic growth that emerged from growth accounting in industrialized countries, and how growth accounting changed history are discussed.