The Long Swing: Comparisons and Interactions Between British and American Balance of Payments, 1820–1913*

Jeffrey G. Williamson

The Journal of Economic History, 1962, vol. 22, issue 1, 21-46

Abstract: In the past decade there has been an extremely active interest in theevidence and importance of the twenty-year building cycle, or Kuznets cycle as Lewis suggests we call it, in both American nineteenth-century development and British development after 1870. The evidence of building cycles in the United States is perhaps more extensive and seems clearly, in the research accumulated by Kuznets, Burns and Abramovitz, to indicate a long swing in the general process of growth, not just long swings isolated to the building trades. Whereas American long swings pervade all domestic series of output, income and investment, British experience seems somewhat different. After 1870 long swings in British capital exports alternated with long swings in domestic investment in a fashion which eliminated excess fluctuations in income and output, which would have been due mainly to fluctuations in aggregate demand.

Date: 1962
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