Calendrier du 10 octobre 2018
Economic History Seminar
Du 10/10/2018 de 12:30 à 14:00
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
VAN DER BEEK Karine (Ben-Gurion U.)
Wheels of Change: Skill biased natural resources and industrialization in eighteenth century England
This paper uses an extensive cross-section of England's historical and geographical characteristics, to examine the role played by geography in determining regions' specialization, mechanization, and extent of textile production in the mid-eighteenth century. It shows that the location of English textile centers practically persisted in the same regions (i.e. the Cotswolds, East Anglia, the middle Pennines in Lancashire, and the West-Riding ) since the fourteenth century, in locations that had grinding mills in earlier periods. Our hypothesis is that the regions' resources determine its relative advantage. In the case of the textile sector, regions that had both the proximity of a rivers and a potential for high wheat yields had more watermills and mechanical workers who were required in order to construct and maintain them. Ceteris paribus, when textile fulling mills were introduced in the fourteenth century, they were more likely to be adopted in textile centers located in places with an existing relative advantage in watermill technology. To identify the effect of the existence of mechanical workers on the extent of textile productions we use the location of grinding mills in the 11th century (from Domesday Book) as an IV for mechanical workers during the first half of the 18th century and find a significant and positive effect. Our findings may imply that the availability of coal and the production of cotton textiles rather than woolens, cannot explain the adoption of steam and industrialization in the North-West by themselves, without taking into account the initial determinants for the initial development a textile center in this area.