The Productivity Race
The Productivity Race
This book is a reassessment of British performance in manufacturing since 1850 in the light of new evidence on international comparisons of productivity. Using a novel analytical framework of technological evolution, Stephen Broadberry uncovers new ways of looking at Britain's relative economic decline while debunking a number of misapprehensions regarding the nature and causes of the decline. It analyses productivity levels in Britain, the United States and Germany and provides detailed case studies of all the major manufacturing industries, broken down into three periods: 1850–1914, 1914–50 and 1950–90. Broadberry offers a wide coverage of industries, with invaluable country-specific information. By combining a multitude of detailed productivity measurements with qualitative industrial and business history, he provides a major contribution to our understanding of British economic performance over the last 150 years.
- A major reassessment of Britain's manufacturing performance over the past 150 years
- Provides internationally comparative data
- Offers a comprehensive set of industry case studies
Reviews & endorsements
"This outstanding monograph makes a notable contribution to our understanding of Western as well as British economic development....this work is essential for economic historians, graduate students, and many economists." Choice
"...one of the most valuable, thoroughly researched and persuasively argued contributions to British industrial history to appear in recent years. It will be studied to effect and widely quoted fokr many years to come." Sidney Pollard, Business History Review
"This book presents a magisterial survey of the record of manufacturing productivity in Britain since the mid-nineteenth century set against American and German experience." William P. Kennedy, American Historical Review
"Overall, historians of technology will be dutiful impressed with Broadberry's volume...which stands as the most comprehensive and useful overview of the history of British manufacturing to date." Jacqueline McGlade, Technology and Culture
Product details
November 2005Paperback
9780521023580
480 pages
228 × 152 × 28 mm
0.71kg
228 tables
Available
Table of Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1. Introduction and overview
- Part I. Measuring Comparative Productivity Performance:
- 2. International comparisons of productivity in manufacturing: benchmark estimates by industry
- 3. Labour productivity in aggregate manufacturing: Britain, the United States and Germany
- 4. Extending the picture: manufacturing productivity in other industrialised countries
- 5. Manufacturing and the whole economy
- Part II. Explaining Comparative Productivity Performance:
- 6. Technology
- 7. Economic geography: markets and natural resources
- 8. Accumulation of physical and human capital
- 9. Competition and adjustment
- Part III. Reassessing the Performance of British Industry:
- 10. The rise of competition from abroad, 1850–1914
- 11. War and depression, 1914–50
- 12. Changing markets and technology, 1950–90
- 13. Concluding comments
- Bibliography
- Index.
