Capital and Economic Growth in Britain, 1270-1870: Preliminary Findings

Stephen Broadberry and Alexandra de Pleijt ()

No _186, Oxford Economic and Social History Working Papers from University of Oxford, Department of Economics

Abstract: Estimates of capital formation and the stock of capital in Britain are provided for the period 1270-1870 and used to analyse economic growth. (1) We chart the growing importance of fixed relative to working capital, the declining importance of land and the growth of net overseas assets. (2) Kaldor’s stylised facts of a rising capital-labour ratio and a stationary capital-output ratio are broadly confirmed, but only if attention is confined to fixed capital. (3) Extensive form growth accounts suggest that output growth was driven largely by factor input growth, while intensive form growth accounts suggest that TFP growth was more important than capital deepening in explaining the growth of output per head. (4) The investment share of GDP increased substantially during the transition from pre-industrial to modern economic growth.

Date: 2021-02-27
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cwa and nep-his
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:28af2918-5612-473d-9900-3579d0c4c811 (text/html)

Related works:
Working Paper: Capital and Economic Growth in Britain, 1270-1870: Preliminary findings (2021)
Working Paper: Capital and Economic Growth in Britain, 1270-1870: Preliminary Findings (2021)
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:oxf:esohwp:_186

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Oxford Economic and Social History Working Papers from University of Oxford, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Anne Pouliquen ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).