Italian Industrial Production, 1861 1913: A Statistical Reconstruction. J. The Utilities Industries

This paper is the tenth section of Italian Industrial Production, 1861 1913: A Statistical Reconstruction (in progress). It documents the derivation, from the historical sources, of the eight time series that trace the product of the utilities industries, and of the corresponding estimates of value added per unit at 1911 prices. The electric utilities are relatively well documented by data on capacity and utilization; separate series trace the production (and distribution) of thermal power on the one hand and hydraulic power on the other. The production of the gas utilities is tracked by separate series for gas, coke, and tar. Data are abundant from the 1890s; the estimates for the earlier years are anchored by an early benchmark, but otherwise largely interpolated. The water utilities are represented by separate series for the exceptional Apulian aqueduct, the other aqueducts, and the local distribution systems. The real product of the Apulian aqueduct, still incomplete, is tracked by the embodied capital. The real product of the other aqueducts is tracked by their equivalent ton-kilometers (the square root of the yield, to allow for economies of scale, times length), estimated from cross-section evidence that includes construction dates. The real product of the local nets is measured by their length (augmented to allow for wells and cisterns), itself reconstructed from sporadic local data.