Railroads and the Rise of the Factory: Evidence for the United States, 1850-70

Jeremy Atack, Michael Haines and Robert Margo

No 14410, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Over the course of the nineteenth century manufacturing in the United States shifted from artisan shop to factory production. At the same time United States experienced a "transportation revolution", a key component of which was the building of extensive railroad network. Using a newly created data set of manufacturing establishments linked to county level data on rail access from 1850-70, we ask whether the coming of the railroad increased establishment size in manufacturing. Difference-in-difference and instrument variable estimates suggest that the railroad had a positive effect on factory status. In other words, Adam Smith was right -- the division of labor in nineteenth century American manufacturing was limited by the extent of the market.

JEL-codes: N61 N71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-ure
Note: DAE
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (53)

Published as “Railroads and the Rise of the Factory: Evidence for the United States, 1850 - 1870,” (with Haines and Margo ) in P a ul Rhode, J oshua Rosenbloom, and D avid Weiman, ( eds. ) Economic Evolution and Revolutions in Historical Time . Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, (2011): 162 - 179 .

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w14410.pdf (application/pdf)

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:nbr:nberwo:14410

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w14410

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().