Investment in Fixed and Working Capital During Early Industrialization: Evidence from U. S. Manufacturing Firms

Kenneth Sokoloff

The Journal of Economic History, 1984, vol. 44, issue 2, 545-556

Abstract: This paper utilizes a survey of U. S. manufacturing firms from 1832 to investigate the structure of manufacturing investment during early industrialization. The relative magnitudes of investments in fixed and working capital, and how they varied with firm size, location, and industry, are documented. This variation across industries in the composition of capital investments is indicative of a more general variation in factor intensities, and bears on the issues of why industries became concentrated in the regions they did, and the degrees to which they were adversely affected by the limited availability of long–term loans. Evidence that most manufacturing industries had quite modest investments in machinery and tools per unit of labor is also presented, serving to undercut the notion that the early period of industrialization was based on a proliferation of new, machinery–intensive technologies.

Date: 1984
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
Working Paper: Investment in Fixed and Working Capital During Early Industrialization: Evidence From U.S. Manufacturing Firms (1984)
Working Paper: Investment in Fixed and Working Capital During Early Industrialization: Evidence from U.S. Manufacturing Firms (1983)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:jechis:v:44:y:1984:i:02:p:545-556_03

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The Journal of Economic History from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().