IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/9626.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

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

Author

Listed:
  • Crafts, Nicholas
  • Wolf, Nikolaus

Abstract

We examine the geography of UK cotton textiles 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 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.

Suggested Citation

  • Crafts, Nicholas & Wolf, Nikolaus, 2013. "The Location of the UK Cotton Textiles Industry in 1838: a Quantitative Analysis," CEPR Discussion Papers 9626, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:9626
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP9626
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Paulo Guimarães & Octávio Figueirdo & Douglas Woodward, 2003. "A Tractable Approach to the Firm Location Decision Problem," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 85(1), pages 201-204, February.
    2. Stephen J. Redding & Daniel M. Sturm & Nikolaus Wolf, 2011. "History and Industry Location: Evidence from German Airports," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 93(3), pages 814-831, August.
    3. Schmidheiny, Kurt & Brülhart, Marius, 2011. "On the equivalence of location choice models: Conditional logit, nested logit and Poisson," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(2), pages 214-222, March.
    4. Melitz, Marc J. & Redding, Stephen J., 2014. "Heterogeneous Firms and Trade," Handbook of International Economics, in: Gopinath, G. & Helpman, . & Rogoff, K. (ed.), Handbook of International Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 0, pages 1-54, Elsevier.
    5. Motta, Massimo & Thisse, Jacques-Francois, 1994. "Does environmental dumping lead to delocation?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 38(3-4), pages 563-576, April.
    6. Sascha O. Becker & Karolina Ekholm & Robert Jäckle & Marc-Andreas Muendler, 2005. "Location Choice and Employment Decisions: A Comparison of German and Swedish Multinationals," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 141(4), pages 693-731, December.
    7. Rosés, Joan R., 2003. "Why Isn't the Whole of Spain Industrialized? New Economic Geography and Early Industrialization, 1797–1910," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 63(4), pages 995-1022, December.
    8. Krugman, Paul, 1991. "Increasing Returns and Economic Geography," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 99(3), pages 483-499, June.
    9. Allen,Robert C., 2009. "The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521868273, September.
    10. Head, Keith & Mayer, Thierry, 2006. "Regional wage and employment responses to market potential in the EU," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(5), pages 573-594, September.
    11. V. A. G. Gatrell, 1977. "T. S. ASHTON PRIZE ESSAY FOR 1976 Labour, Power, and the Size of Firms in Lancashire Cotton in the Second Quarter of the Nineteenth Century," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 30(1), pages 95-139, February.
    12. Daron Acemoglu, 1998. "Why Do New Technologies Complement Skills? Directed Technical Change and Wage Inequality," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 113(4), pages 1055-1089.
    13. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/10192 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Theo Balderston, 2010. "The economics of abundance: coal and cotton in Lancashire and the world," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 63(3), pages 569-590, August.
    15. Timothy Leunig, 2003. "A British industrial success: productivity in the Lancashire and New England cotton spinning industries a century ago," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 56(1), pages 90-117, February.
    16. Peter Solar & John Lyons, 2011. "The English cotton spinning industry, 1780-1840, as revealed in the columns of the London Gazette," Business History, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 53(3), pages 302-323.
    17. Marc J. Melitz, 2003. "The Impact of Trade on Intra-Industry Reallocations and Aggregate Industry Productivity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 71(6), pages 1695-1725, November.
    18. Keith Head & Thierry Mayer, 2004. "Market Potential and the Location of Japanese Investment in the European Union," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 86(4), pages 959-972, November.
    19. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/10192 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Miren Lafourcade & Jacques-François Thisse, 2008. "New economic geography: A guide to transport analysis," Working Papers halshs-00586878, HAL.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Stephen J. Redding, 2010. "The Empirics Of New Economic Geography," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(1), pages 297-311, February.
    2. Julio Martinez-Galarraga & Daniel A. Tirado & Rafael González-Val, 2015. "Market potential and regional economic growth in Spain (1860–1930)," European Review of Economic History, European Historical Economics Society, vol. 19(4), pages 335-358.
    3. Breinlich, Holger & Ottaviano, Gianmarco I.P. & Temple, Jonathan R.W., 2014. "Regional Growth and Regional Decline," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 4, pages 683-779, Elsevier.
    4. Julio Martinez-Galarraga & Elisenda Paluzie & Jordi Pons & Javier Silvestre & Daniel A. Tirado, 2021. "New economic geography and economic history: a survey of recent contributions through the lens of the Spanish industrialization process," Cliometrica, Springer;Cliometric Society (Association Francaise de Cliométrie), vol. 15(3), pages 719-751, September.
    5. Ouyang, Puman & Zhang, Teng & Dong, Yan, 2015. "Market potential, firm exports and profit: Which market do the Chinese firms profit from?," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 94-108.
    6. Maria Florencia Granato, 2011. "REGIONAL NEW ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY (refereed paper)," ERSA conference papers ersa10p747, European Regional Science Association.
    7. Giordano Mion & Paolo Naticchioni, 2009. "The spatial sorting and matching of skills and firms," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 42(1), pages 28-55, February.
    8. Nielsen, Hana, 2021. "Coal and Sugar: The Black and White Gold of Czech Industrialization (1841-1863)," Lund Papers in Economic History 229, Lund University, Department of Economic History.
    9. Marie-Line Duboz & Nathalie Kroichvili & Julie Le Gallo, 2019. "What matters most for FDI attraction in services: country or region performance? An empirical analysis of EU for 1997–2012," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 63(3), pages 601-638, December.
    10. Julio Martínez-Galarraga, 2014. "Market potential estimates in history: a survey of methods and an application to Spain, 1867-1930," Working Papers 0051, European Historical Economics Society (EHES).
    11. Fatica, Serena, 2009. "Taxation and the quality of institutions: asymmetric effects on FDI," MPRA Paper 24179, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Jun 2010.
    12. Christian Ochsner, 2017. "Dismantled once, diverged forever? A quasi-natural experiment of Red Army misdeeds in post-WWII Europe," ifo Working Paper Series 240, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich.
    13. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/c8dmi8nm4pdjkuc9g8mb6c01j is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Schäffler, Johannes & Hecht, Veronika & Moritz, Michael, 2014. "Regional determinants of German FDI in the Czech Republic : evidence from a gravity model approach," IAB-Discussion Paper 201403, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany].
    15. Redding, Stephen, 2020. "Trade and Geography," CEPR Discussion Papers 15268, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    16. Megha Mukim & Peter Nunnenkamp, 2012. "The Location Choices of Foreign Investors: A District-level Analysis in India," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(7), pages 886-918, July.
    17. Kim, Ho Yeon, 2012. "Shrinking population and the urban hierarchy," IDE Discussion Papers 360, Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization(JETRO).
    18. Hongbing Li & Hongbo Cai & Suparna Chakraborty, 2019. "Market Access, Labor Mobility, and the Wage Skill Premium: New Evidence from Chinese Cities," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 30(5), pages 947-973, November.
    19. Keith Head & Thierry Mayer, 2011. "Gravity, market potential and economic development," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 11(2), pages 281-294, March.
    20. Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt & Arne Feddersen, 2010. "From periphery to core: economic adjustments to high speed rail," Working Papers 2010/38, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    21. Martina Lawless & Daire McCoy & Edgar L. W. Morgenroth & Conor M. O”Toole, 2018. "Corporate tax and location choice for multinational firms," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(26), pages 2920-2931, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Agglomeration; Cotton textiles; Geography; Industry location;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • N63 - Economic History - - Manufacturing and Construction - - - Europe: Pre-1913
    • N93 - Economic History - - Regional and Urban History - - - Europe: Pre-1913
    • R12 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Size and Spatial Distributions of Regional Economic Activity; Interregional Trade (economic geography)

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:9626. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.