The Location of the UK Cotton Textiles Industry in 1838: a Quantitative Analysis

Nicholas Crafts and Nikolaus Wolf

No 45, Working Papers from European Historical Economics Society (EHES)

Abstract: We examine the geography of cotton textiles in Britain in 1838 to test claims about why the industry came to be so heavily concentrated in Lancashire. Our analysis considers both first and second nature aspects of geography including the availability of water power, humidity, coal prices, market access and sunk costs. We show that some of these characteristics have substantial explanatory power. Moreover, we exploit the change from water to steam power to show that the persistent effect of first nature characteristics on industry location can be explained by a combination of sunk costs and agglomeration effects.

Keywords: agglomeration; cotton textiles; geography; industry location (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N63 N93 R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 46 pages
Date: 2013-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse, nep-geo, nep-his, nep-hme, nep-ind and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

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Related works:
Journal Article: The Location of the UK Cotton Textiles Industry in 1838: A Quantitative Analysis (2014)
Working Paper: The Location of the UK Cotton Textiles Industry in 1838: a Quantitative Analysis (2013)
Working Paper: The Location of the UK Cotton Textiles Industry in 1838: a Quantitative Analysis (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hes:wpaper:0045

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