IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hes/wpaper/0097.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The revealed comparative advantages of late-Victorian Britain

Author

Listed:
  • Brian D. Varian

    (London School of Economics and Political Science)

Abstract

This paper calculates indicators of revealed comparative advantage (RCA) and revealed symmetric comparative advantage (RSCA) for 17 British manufacturing industries for the years 1880, 1890, and 1900. The resulting indicators show that the late-Victorian ‘workshop of the world’ was at a marked comparative disadvantage in a number of manufacturing industries. The paper then proceeds to identify the factor determinants of Britain’s manufacturing comparative advantages (disadvantages) using a four-factor Heckscher-Ohlin model that relies upon these indicators. In contrast with previous scholarship, the manufacturing comparative advantages of late-Victorian Britain were in the relatively labour non-intensive industries, and this pattern became more pronounced throughout the period. The paper concludes with the observation that the factor determinants of Britain’s manufacturing comparative advantages appear closer to those of the United States than had traditionally been thought.

Suggested Citation

  • Brian D. Varian, 2016. "The revealed comparative advantages of late-Victorian Britain," Working Papers 0097, European Historical Economics Society (EHES).
    • Handle: RePEc:hes:wpaper:0097
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.ehes.org/wp/EHES_97.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Varian, Brian, 2018. "The economics of Edwardian imperial preference: what can New Zealand reveal?," Economic History Working Papers 88298, London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Economic History.
    2. Hasan Halife, 2022. "Competitiveness Analysis of Textile Industry of Turkey: Revealed Comparative Advantage Approach," International Journal of Global Business and Competitiveness, Springer, vol. 17(1), pages 25-30, December.
    3. Giacomo Domini, 2019. "Patterns of specialisation and economic complexity through the lens of universal exhibitions, 1855-1900," LEM Papers Series 2019/20, Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    comparative advantage; Heckscher-Ohlin; manufacturing; Britain; nineteenth century;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F11 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Neoclassical Models of Trade
    • F14 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Empirical Studies of Trade
    • N63 - Economic History - - Manufacturing and Construction - - - Europe: Pre-1913
    • N73 - Economic History - - Economic History: Transport, International and Domestic Trade, Energy, and Other Services - - - Europe: Pre-1913

    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:hes:wpaper:0097. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Paul Sharp (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ehessea.html .

    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.