Total factor productivity growth on Britain's railways, 1852-1912: a reappraisal of the evidence

Abstract

This paper revisits the issue of the productivity performance of pre-World War I Britain’s railway system with an improved dataset and with modern time-series econometrics. We find a slowdown in TFP growth between 1850 and 1870, after which it stabilized at about 1.1%. An analysis of company-level productivity rejects the claims that there was a regulation-induced revival of productivity performance in the railway sector after 1900 but, on the other hand, it supports the claim that there was some managerial failure during the period.

Original document

The different versions of the original document can be found in:

• http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/22553

• http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/22553,

http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/economicHistory