What explains the location of industry in Britain, 1871–1931?

Abstract

Were the new economic geography forces for industry agglomeration and dispersion at work in the movement of industry in pre-1931 Britain where transport costs were falling? This paper examines the issue empirically using a general model that nests the Heckscher-Ohlin factor endowment with new economic geography models. The evidence suggests that while the location of pre-1931 British industry was mainly driven by the former, the scale economies aspect of the latter also played a role.

The determinants of industrial location in Spain, 1856–1929

“…45 In fact, returning to the British case, when the variable 'steam power use' was replaced by 'coal use', the interaction became statistically insignificant. Crafts and Mulatu (2005). 46 "Both coal and skilled-labor interactions change signs and are insignificant for most of the time".…”

Regional Incomes in Portugal: Industrialisation, Integration and Inequality, 1890-1980

“…This is the reason because in 1980 any region had a very high value, and also is a sign of less inequality. 12 For Spain see Rosés et al (2010), for France see Combes et al (2011) and Crafts and Mulatu (2005) among others,…”

The Distribution of Energy-Intensive Sectors in the US

“…Redding and Vera-Martin [2006] test the H-O model for 45 European NUTS-1 regions and find that factor endowments can explain industry location on the regional level, though better so for aggregate industries (manufacturing, services, agriculture) than for individual manufacturing sectors. Papers that focus on regions within individual countries include Crafts and Mulatu [2005] (UK) and Paluzie et al [2001], Requena et al [2008] (Spain). Using regional data circumvents the problems of different technologies and consumer tastes that plague cross-country studies, but if factors are mobile between regions it may no longer be clear whether factor abundance drives industry location or the other way around [Schott, 2003].…”