Taking over: a new appraisal of the Anglo-American productivity gap and the nature of American economic leadership ca. 1910

Pieter Woltjer

Scandinavian Economic History Review, 2015, vol. 63, issue 3, 280-301

Abstract: This article re-examines how and when the USA closed the gap and ultimately overtook the UK in terms of both labour productivity and real income. On the basis of a set of sectoral productivity benchmarks for the year 1910 - which utilise a more rigorous methodology than previous pre-First World War productivity studies - I find a substantial USA lead in both agriculture as well as industry. I conclude that the relative strength of the American economy has been underestimated by Maddison and various other scholars. This study suggests that the USA had challenged British economic leadership in terms of relative labour productivity as well as relative income levels long before 1900, and not thereafter. This finding ties into an ongoing heated debate on the timing of the Anglo-American takeover.

Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/03585522.2015.1034766 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
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:taf:sehrxx:v:63:y:2015:i:3:p:280-301

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/sehr20

DOI: 10.1080/03585522.2015.1034766

Access Statistics for this article

Scandinavian Economic History Review is currently edited by Espen Ekberg and Francisco Beltran Tapia

More articles in Scandinavian Economic History Review from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().