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The manufacturing comparative advantages of late-Victorian Britain

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Abstract

This article constructs indicators of revealed comparative advantage for 18 British manufacturing industries for the years 1880, 1890, and 1900. These indicators constitute the earliest systematic measurements of the relative performance of British industries. The indicators are then employed in a four-factor Heckscher–Ohlin model of trade, with the factors being capital, labour, material inputs, and human capital. Contrary to the previous literature, the manufacturing comparative advantages of late-Victorian Britain were not in the relatively labour-intensive industries. By 1890, there was a distinctly labour-economizing regime within British manufacturing. Contributing to this pattern of within-sector specialization were emigration from Britain and the full absorption of displaced agricultural labour into the manufacturing sector. This article concludes with the suggestion that, in the late-Victorian era, British and American manufacturing were not so dissimilar, at least relative to Continental manufacturing.

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Notes

  1. The staple industries of textiles and iron accounted for fully 66% of Britain’s manufactured exports in 1902–1904 (Schlote 1952, p. 74).

  2. For example, in the 1930s, Britain tended to realize comparative advantages and lesser gaps in labour productivity (relative to the USA) in light manufacturing industries (Broadberry and Crafts 1992, p. 542).

  3. Although, as later observed in this article, Habakkuk (1962, pp. 194–195) himself conceded that the distinction had diminished by the late nineteenth century.

  4. Temin (1997, p. 76) correlated the exports of traditional industries at the endpoints of various intervals spanning the early nineteenth century. He found very high correlation coefficients.

  5. Temin’s exposition of the model followed that of Dornbusch et al. (1977).

  6. As Harley noted, the distinction between skilled and unskilled labour offered a potential resolution to the famous Leontief paradox in post-war American trade. He speculated that there might have been a Leontief paradox in Edwardian British trade, whereby labour-scarce Britain exported labour-intensive manufactured commodities. While he did not quite make such an assertion, he did claim that the two-factor (capital and labour) H–O model was inadequate (Harley 1974, pp. 411–413).

  7. On the relationship between tariffs and RCA, Balassa (1965, p. 104) observed that “as long as all exporters are subject to the same tariff, data on relative export performance are not distorted by differences in the degree of tariff protection”. However, whereas ad valorem tariffs predominated at the time of Balassa’s writing, specific tariffs predominated in the late nineteenth century. Differences (across exporting countries) in the price of a commodity would result in differing ad valorem equivalent tariffs and, consequently, differing trade costs. Thus, even if all exporters are subjected to the same (specific) tariff, the tariff can still distort the data on relative export performance.

  8. Their measure of trade costs is the difference between actual bilateral trade and frictionless bilateral trade. The measure is comparable across country pairs.

  9. However, in the very large Anglo-American trade, Varian (2018) found tariffs to have been the sole intertemporal determinant of trade costs.

  10. Jacks et al. (2010, p. 135) did not estimate the intertemporal and cross-sectional determinants of exclusively Britain’s bilateral trade costs, but they did estimate the intertemporal and cross-sectional determinants of bilateral trade costs for a larger sample of bilateral pairs that included both British and non-British bilateral pairs, e.g. Franco-German. In this random effects regression that exploited both the intertemporal and cross-sectional variation in the data, they found that distance and tariffs were positive determinants of bilateral trade costs, while gold-standard adherence, membership in the British Empire, and railway density were negative determinants.

  11. For example, in the presence of transport costs, a commodity might be imported from a geographically proximate country, rather than from a country with a comparative advantage in the commodity.

  12. In the commodity-disaggregation section of the British trade statistics, the further bilateral disaggregation is incomplete due to the category of “other foreign countries”; the composition of “other foreign countries” varies according to the commodity. Similarly, in the bilateral disaggregation of the British trade statistics, the further commodity disaggregation is incomplete due to the category of “all other articles”; the composition of “all other articles” varies according to the country.

  13. As discussed later in this section, industries are constructed from various commodities. Therefore, in order to compare the exports of machinery and silk manufactures to a particular country, that country must be specifically reported in the bilateral disaggregation of all of the commodities constituting both the machinery and silk industries, as those industries are defined in this study.

  14. The method of estimating the value of world exports in these industries is covered later in this section.

  15. The sources are UK, HM Customs, Statistics Office (various years); Belgium, Ministère des Finances (various years); France, Administration des Douanes (various years); Germany, Kaiserlichen Statistischen Amt (various years); United States, Treasury Department (various years). The American data are for the years 1879/1880, 1889/1890, and 1899/1900, the American statistical year having spanned from 1 July to 30 June.

  16. The 11 countries include the five abovementioned industrial countries, as well as Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, Canada, India, and Japan.

  17. The implicit assumption is that the share of the omitted industrial countries was equal across industries and constant from 1880 to 1900.

  18. In contrast, the American share of secondary-sector world exports was less than the American share of total world exports in 1899/1900. Thus, excluding the primary sector from the normalization factor increases the levels of the RCA indicators for American manufacturing industries. In 1899/1900, the primary sector contributed 68% of American exports (United States, Treasury Department 1901).

  19. For a discussion of the protection that British woollen and worsted exports encountered in foreign markets, see Saul (1960, p. 151). If such protection enabled foreign manufactures to become internationally competitive, per the infant industry argument, then Britain’s comparative advantage in this industry would have been affected.

  20. Although, Clapham (1938, p. 36) noted, “Long before the 'nineties, exports of new American machinery, or of American mechanical notions, had affected the course and pace of industrial change in Britain”.

  21. The decline in the American price of iron and steel (relative to the British price) can be attributed to the fall in the American price of iron ore resulting from the opening of the Mesabi Range in the 1890s.

  22. In 1907, the gross output of this sub-industry was £17.9 million or about 6% of the entire textile industry. This sub-industry is allocated as follows: 60.7% to cotton manufactures, including yarn; 26.4% to woollen and worsted manufactures, including yarn; 11.2% to flax, hemp, and jute manufactures, including yarn and cordage; and 1.8% to silk manufactures.

  23. A proxy for capital intensity per industry is necessary, as the First Census of Production of 1907 did not collect data on the manufacturing capital stock. The census did, however, collect data on horsepower per industry and sub-industry. Somewhat rudimentary evidence of the suitability of horsepower as a proxy for capital can be obtained from the American Twelfth Census of 1900, which collected data on both capital and horsepower per industry (United States, Census Office 1902). At the 15-industry level of disaggregation of American manufacturing, the correlation coefficient between the capital stock (standardized by gross output)—not the capital cost—and horsepower (standardized by gross output) is 0.52. This coefficient is statistically significant at the 5% level. Excluding the industry of lumber and its remanufactures, which existed to a far lesser extent in Britain than in the USA, causes the correlation coefficient to rise to 0.57. As should be expected, the 15 industries defined in the Twelfth Census do not match the 18 industries defined in this article.

  24. Beach and Hanlon (2018) offer a recent precedent for backdating factor intensities from the 1907 census into the nineteenth century. They applied the cross-industry variation in coal use per worker from the 1907 census to the year 1851.

  25. By comparison, the USA was collecting such data a century before Britain.

  26. Using the average industry wages of all labourers, including females, would likely understate the human capital intensity of those industries that relied disproportionately on female labour. For example, an adult male warper working full time in the woollen industry was paid a time wage of £1.20 per week, while an adult female warper working full time in the woollen industry was paid a time wage of £0.70 per week.

  27. Specifically, the sources are United Kingdom, Board of Trade (1909a, b, 1911, 1913).

  28. The RCA indicator is asymmetric, as the range for comparative disadvantage lies between 0 and 1, while the range for comparative advantage lies between 1 and the reciprocal of the country’s share of world exports, which is 6.2 for Britain in 1890. Laursen (2015, pp. 105–107) called for making the RCA indicator symmetric for the purpose of regression analysis, since the use of an asymmetric indicator would tend to result in a violation of the normality assumption for the error terms.

  29. For a discussion of the cyclicality of British exports in the late nineteenth century, see Ford (1963).

  30. In 1907, the factor proportion of coal (and coke) in the cement and earthenware industries was 22% and 7%, respectively. In each of the other 16 manufacturing industries, the factor proportion was less than 5%.

  31. The material intensity variable is adjusted to exclude coal and coke usage per industry, the domestic prices of steam coal (£0.458 per ton) and coke (£0.839 per ton) being calculated from the First Census of Production.

  32. Attention should be directed to columns 3 and 4 of Appendix 3, which presents several robustness checks. When the RSCA indicators are regressed against only material intensity (column 3), the coefficient of material intensity is positive and statistically significant. When the RSCA indicators are regressed against only non-coal material intensity, then the coefficient is positive but statistically insignificant. This discrepancy suggests that Britain’s manufacturing comparative advantages were coal-intensive. In the main specification of the model (Table 4, column 1), however, the coefficient of material intensity is insignificant, likely because coal usage is captured by the proxy variable for capital intensity, which is horsepower per £1 million gross output. Nevertheless, there is no basis for claiming that the manufacturing comparative advantages of late-Victorian Britain economized upon non-coal material inputs.

  33. For clarity, it should be stressed that the 1907 capital–labour ratio is not an explanatory variable in any of the specifications in Table 4.

  34. This correlation coefficient is calculated from the 17 industries, which exclude cement, as it was not reported in the Factory Inspectorate Returns of 1870.

  35. On this point, it is worth noting that Habakkuk (1962, pp. 194–195) stated, “And if American labour was, except in the remoter parts of the country, no longer scarce, in England it was no longer as abundant as it had been earlier in the century”.

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Chris Minns, Joan Rosés, Stephen Broadberry, Douglas Irwin, Thilo Albers, and two anonymous referees for their valuable comments. I also received immensely helpful feedback from participants in the SOUND Economic History Workshop at Lund University, the Economic History Society Conference at the University of Cambridge (Robinson College), the Conference on “Labour Markets and Living Standards, 1870–1960” at the University of Essex, and seminars at the LSE and the University of Oxford (Nuffield College). All errors are mine.

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    Brian D. Varian

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Appendices

Appendix 1: RCA indicators for Belgium, France, Germany, and the USA

See Tables 5, 6, 7 and 8.

Table 5 RCA indicators for Belgium, 1880–1900
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Table 6 RCA indicators for France, 1880–1900
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Table 7 RCA indicators for Germany, 1880–1900
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Table 8 RCA indicators for the USA, 1880–1900
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Appendix 2: Industry components of factor intensities

2.1 Capital, labour, and material inputs (1907)

The data for calculating the factor intensities (or proxies therefor) of capital, labour, and material inputs are obtained from the First Census of Production of 1907 (United Kingdom, Board of Trade 1912). The 18 industries in this article correspond to the following industries and sub-industries in the census:

  • Beer: Brewing and malting trades

  • Cement: Cement trade

  • Chemicals, including dyestuffs, medicine, and paint: Chemicals, coal tar products, drugs, and perfumery trade; Paint, colour, and varnish trades

  • Clocks and watches: Watch and clock trades

  • Copper manufactures: Copper and brass trades (smelting, rolling, and casting)

  • Cotton manufactures, including yarn: Cotton trade; 60.7% of Bleaching, dyeing, printing, and finishing trades

  • Earthenware and chinaware: China and earthenware trades

  • Flax, hemp, and jute manufactures, including yarn and cordage: Jute, hemp, and linen trades; 11.2% of Bleaching, dyeing, printing, and finishing trades; Rope, twine, and net trades

  • Glass: Glass, stone, roofing, felts, and miscellaneous trades

  • Iron, steel, and manufactures thereof, excluding machinery: Iron and steel, engineering, and shipbuilding trades (all sub-industries thereof), excluding Engineering trades (including electrical engineering), excluding Shipbuilding and marine engineering trades, and excluding Small arms trades

  • Leather and manufactures thereof: Boot and shoe trades; Glove trade; Leather trade (tanning and dressing); Saddlery and harness trade; Travelling bag and fancy leather goods trade

  • Machinery, including steam engines and locomotives: Engineering trades (including electrical engineering)

  • Musical instruments: Musical instruments trades

  • Paper and manufactures thereof: Paper trade; Cardboard box trade

  • Rubber and manufactures thereof: Indiarubber trades

  • Silk manufactures: Silk trades; 1.8% of Bleaching, dyeing, printing, and finishing trades

  • Spirits: Spirit distilling trade; Spirit compounding, rectifying, and methylating trades

  • Woollen and worsted manufactures, including yarn: Woollen and worsted trades; 26.4% of Bleaching, dyeing, printing, and finishing trades

2.2 Human capital (1906)

The data for calculating the proxy for human capital intensity are obtained from the reports of the Hours and Earnings Enquiry of 1906 (United Kingdom, Board of Trade 1909a, b, 1911, 1913). The 18 industries in this article correspond to the industries and sub-industries listed here. Following each of the 18 industries, the average weekly wage of an adult male working full time, without the deduction of the unskilled manufacturing wage (£1.01), is noted in parentheses. The average industry wage reported in parentheses is an employment-share-weighted average of the average wages in the constituent industries and sub-industries. The weights attached to each of the constituent industries and sub-industries are noted in parentheses, as well.

  • Beer (£1.31): Malting and brewing (1.000)

  • Cement (£1.42): Lime and cement works (1.000)

  • Chemicals, including dyestuffs, medicine, and paint (£1.41): Chemical manufacture (0.595); Other chemical industries (0.405)

  • Clocks and watches (£1.63): Watch and clock making and repairing (1.000)

  • Copper manufactures (£1.58): Manufacture of brass and allied metal wares (0.389); Smelting, rolling, &c. of metals other than iron (0.611)

  • Cotton manufactures, including yarn (£1.45): Cotton (0.731); 60.7% of Bleaching, printing, dying, and finishing textile fabrics (0.269)

  • Earthenware and chinaware (£1.62): Porcelain, china and earthenware manufacture (1.000)

  • Flax, hemp, and jute manufactures, including yarn and cordage (£1.19): Linen (0.584); 11.2% of Bleaching, printing, dying, and finishing textile fabrics (0.081); Jute (0.229); Hemp (0.106)

  • Glass (£1.80): Glass bottle manufacture (0.653); Other glass industries (0.347)

  • Iron, steel, and manufactures thereof, excluding machinery (£1.81): Pig iron manufacture (blast furnaces) (0.128); Iron and steel manufacture (0.463); Tinplate manufacture (0.070); Manufacture of light iron castings, stoves, grates, &c. (0.088); Wire drawing and working (0.054); Manufacture of edge tools, spades, files, &c. (0.023); Cycle making and repairing (0.047); Tube manufacture (0.056); Nails, screws, nuts, &c. manufacture (0.018); Bedstead manufacture (0.014); Farriery and General Smiths’ Work (0.014); Needle, fish-hooks, and fishing-tackle manufacture (0.005); Chain, anchor, &c. manufacture (0.010); Lock, latch, key, &c. manufacture (0.005); Typefounding (0.006)

  • Leather and manufactures thereof (£1.38): Leather tanning and dressing, fellmongering, &c. (0.331); Saddlery, harness, and whip manufacture (0.041); Portmanteau, bag, purse, and miscellaneous leather manufacture (0.040); Boot and shoe (ready made) (0.564); Leather glove (0.025)

  • Machinery, including steam engines and locomotives (£1.62): Engineering and boilermaking (1.000)

  • Musical instruments (£1.86): Musical instrument manufacture (1.000)

  • Paper and manufactures thereof (£1.51): Paper manufacture (0.505); Paper stationery manufacture (0.325); Cardboard, canvas, &c. box manufacture (0.054); Wallpaper, &c. manufacture (0.116)

  • Rubber and manufactures thereof: Indiarubber, gutta percha, &c. industry (1.000)

  • Silk manufactures (£1.31): Silk (0.747); 1.8% of Bleaching, printing, dying, and finishing textile fabrics (0.253)

  • Spirits (£1.15): Spirit distilling (1.000)

  • Woollen and worsted manufactures, including yarn (£1.35): Woollen and worsted (0.762); 26.4% of Bleaching, printing, dying, and finishing textile fabrics (0.238)

2.3 Capital–labour ratio (1870)

The data for calculating the proxy for the capital–labour ratio are obtained from Musson (1976, pp. 437–439), which compiled the data from the Factory Inspectorate Returns of 1870. It should be observed that there are no data for the cement industry. The 17 remaining industries in this article correspond to the following industries and sub-industries reported in Musson:

  • Beer: Breweries

  • Chemicals, including dyestuffs, medicine, and paint: Miscellaneous chemical works

  • Clocks and watches: Clocks and watches

  • Copper manufactures: Copper-mills

  • Cotton manufactures, including yarn: Cotton factories

  • Earthenware and chinaware: Potteries; Other earthenware

  • Flax, hemp, and jute manufactures, including yarn and cordage: Flax factories; Hemp factories; Jute factories; Ropemaking

  • Glass: Glass-making

  • Iron, steel, and manufactures thereof, excluding machinery: Blast furnaces and iron-mills; Foundries; Type- and stereotype-founding; Nails and rivets; Cutlery; Files, saws, and tools; Locks

  • Leather and manufactures thereof: Leather manufactures (all sub-industries thereof); Boot- and shoe-making; Manufacture of gloves

  • Machinery, including steam engines and locomotives: Manufacture of machinery

  • Musical instruments: Musical instruments

  • Paper and manufactures thereof: Paper manufactures (all sub-industries thereof)

  • Rubber and manufactures thereof: Indiarubber and gutta percha

  • Silk manufactures: Silk factories

  • Spirits: Distilleries

  • Woollen and worsted manufactures, including yarn: Woollen factories; Worsted factories

Appendix 3: Robustness checks

See Table 9.

Table 9 RSCA indicators for Britain’s manufacturing industries, 1880–1900
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Varian, B.D. The manufacturing comparative advantages of late-Victorian Britain. Cliometrica 14, 479–506 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11698-019-00195-w

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