The Productivity Race: British Manufacturing in International Perspective, 1850-1990

by Steve N. Broadberry

Overview

This book is a reassessment of British performance in manufacturing since 1850 in the light of new evidence on international comparisons of productivity. It analyzes productivity levels in Britain, the United States and Germany and provides detailed case studies of all the major manufacturing industries over the past century and a half. 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521584401
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	08/14/1997
Pages:	478
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 1.18(d)

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.

Editorial Reviews

"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

From the Publisher