The Course and Character of Late-Victorian British Exports
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London School of Economics and Political Science The course and character of late-Victorian British exports Brian Douglas Varian Submitted to the Department of Economic History of the London School of Economics and Political Science for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy London June 2017 2 Declaration I certify that the dissertation I have presented for examination for the PhD degree of the London School of Economics and Political Science is solely my own work. The copyright of this dissertation rests with the author. Quotation from it is permitted, provided that full acknowledgement is made. This dissertation may not be reproduced without my prior written consent. I warrant that this authorization does not, to the best of my belief, infringe the rights of any third party. A modified version of chapter II of this dissertation is forthcoming in the Economic History Review under the title ‘Anglo-American trade costs during the first era of globalization: the contribution of a bilateral tariff series’. A modified version of chapter III of this dissertation is forthcoming in the Australian Economic History Review under the title ‘British capital and merchandise exports, 1870-1913: the bilateral case of New Zealand’. I thank Wiley-Blackwell Publishers for the permission to reproduce this content here. I declare that my dissertation consists of 47,920 words, excluding front matter, bibliography, and appendices. 3 Abstract In this dissertation, I examine the inter-temporal variation (course) and the composition (character) of late-Victorian British exports. The first substantive chapter focuses specifically on Anglo-American trade, which was the largest bilateral flow of trade during the first era of globalization, and finds that tariffs were the sole inter-temporal determinant of Anglo-American trade costs. The determinacy of tariffs for Anglo-American trade costs only becomes apparent when the tariff variable incorporates a measure of the bilateral American tariff toward Britain, which I purposely reconstruct. I conclude that Anglo-American trade represents a major qualification to any emerging consensus that foreign tariffs were of minor significance to the trade of late nineteenth-century Britain. The next chapter reassesses the empirical validity of the Ford thesis, which argued that a short-term causal relationship between British ex ante lending and British merchandise exports operated in the late nineteenth century. Using more recent data on bilateral British lending, I find evidence of a ‘lending-export loop’, with British ex ante lending preceding merchandise exports by a period of two years. A case study of New Zealand, which had an extraordinarily high share of Britain in its imports, reveals that the relationship was conditional upon the lending being allocated to social overhead capital. In the final substantive chapter, I construct indicators of revealed comparative advantage for British manufacturing industries for the years 1880, 1890, and 1900. In contrast with previous research, I argue that the manufacturing comparative advantages of late-Victorian Britain rested in the relatively labour non-intensive industries, and this finding remains robust even after controlling for human capital intensity. Furthermore, the manufacturing comparative advantages were neutral with respect to material intensity. While the share of inter-industry (Heckscher-Ohlin) trade in Britain’s total manufacturing trade declined throughout the late-Victorian era, it still accounted for the majority of Britain’s manufacturing trade in the 1890s. 4 Contents Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................... 7 I: Introduction............................................................................................................... 9 Aims and scope ................................................................................................... 9 Terms of trade ................................................................................................... 21 Export markets .................................................................................................. 26 Exports and the climacteric debate ................................................................... 34 The newer literature .......................................................................................... 42 Periodization ..................................................................................................... 46 II: Anglo-American trade costs during the first era of globalization: the contribution of a bilateral tariff series ............................................................................................ 51 Introduction....................................................................................................... 51 Literature........................................................................................................... 53 Gravity models ........................................................................................ 53 Iron, steel, and tinplate ............................................................................ 55 Bilateral tariffs......................................................................................... 57 Reconstructing the bilateral American tariff toward Britain ............................ 59 The course of the bilateral tariff ....................................................................... 70 Estimating the inter-temporal determinants of Anglo-American trade costs ... 76 Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 80 III: British capital and merchandise exports, 1870-1913 ........................................... 81 Introduction....................................................................................................... 81 Literature........................................................................................................... 84 Empirical analysis ............................................................................................. 88 The bilateral case of New Zealand ................................................................... 93 British lending to New Zealand .............................................................. 93 Testing for the lending-export loop ......................................................... 96 Conclusion ...................................................................................................... 103 5 IV: The manufacturing trade of late-Victorian Britain: how much can Heckscher- Ohlin explain? .......................................................................................................... 105 Introduction..................................................................................................... 105 Literature review ............................................................................................. 107 Heckscher-Ohlin model......................................................................... 107 New trade theory ................................................................................... 108 Measuring comparative advantage ................................................................. 110 Factor determinants ........................................................................................ 118 Three-factor model ................................................................................ 118 Four-factor model .................................................................................. 127 The rise of intra-industry trade ....................................................................... 129 The British linen yarn industry ....................................................................... 137 Conclusion ...................................................................................................... 142 V: Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 144 Summary of findings ...................................................................................... 144 Areas for further research ............................................................................... 146 The usefulness of bilateral case studies .......................................................... 148 Bibliography ............................................................................................................. 150 Appendices ............................................................................................................... 164 6 List of Tables 1.1 Britain’s export markets, 1870-1900 1.2 Britain’s export volume growth rates, 1853-96 2.1 Industry weights and tariffs, 1870/1-1912/3 2.2 Bilateral American tariff toward Britain, 1870/1-1912/3 2.3 Dutiable and non-dutiable American imports from Britain, 1898/9 and 1912/3 2.4 Determinants of Anglo-American trade costs, 1872-1913* 3.1 Bilateral British merchandise exports, 1871-1913* 3.2 Correlation coefficients of bilateral British lending, 1880-1913 3.3 British merchandise exports to New Zealand, 1871-1913* 3.4 British capital and consumption goods exports to New Zealand, 1872-1900* 4.1 RCA indicators for Britain, 1880-1900 4.2 Spearman correlation coefficients of Britain’s RCA indicators, 1880-1950 4.3 Factor intensities of British industries, 1906/7 4.4 Three-factor Heckscher-Ohlin model, 1880-1900* 4.5 Four-factor Heckscher-Ohlin model, 1880-1900* 4.6 Grubel-Lloyd