Why Nations Fail: Managerial Decisions and Performance in Indian Cotton Textiles, 1890–1938

Wolcott, Susan; Clark, Gregory

doi:10.1017/s0022050700022889

Cited by 39 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…The same adjustment, however, pushes the foreign underdeveloped indices upward as well, and India's relative position changes but little." See Clark and Wolcott (2003) and Wolcott and Clark (1999) for a different perspective on the causes of Indian under-development.…”

Section: E Ols Versus IV Estimatesmentioning

confidence: 99%

British Colonial Institutions and Economic Development in India

Kapur¹,

Kim²

2006

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We explore the impact of British colonial institutions on the economic development of India. In some regions, the British colonial government assigned property rights in land and taxes to landlords whereas in others it assigned them directly to cultivators or non-landlords. Although Banerjee and Iyer (2005) find that agricultural productivity of non-landlord areas diverged and out-performed relative to landlord areas after 1965 with the advent of the Green Revolution, we find evidence of superior economic performance of non-landlord regions in both the pre-and the post-independence periods. We believe that landlord and non-landlord regions diverged because their differing property rights institutions led to differences in incentives for development.

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Section: E Ols Versus IV Estimatesmentioning

confidence: 99%

British Colonial Institutions and Economic Development in India

Kapur¹,

Kim²

2006

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“…As Table 2 shows, my estimates Zhao and Chen (1997). b Duus (1989 Wolcott and Clark (1999). Notes: Table 2 compares estimates of labor and capital productivity based on CCMOA data (bolded) to estimates reported by other sources (indicated below).…”

Section: Productivity In Cotton Spinningmentioning

confidence: 98%

Do Local Institutions Affect All Foreign Investors in the Same Way? Evidence from the Interwar Chinese Textile Industry

Zeitz¹

2013

J. Econ. Hist.

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This article analyzes the impact of employment institutions on Japanese-, British-, and Chinese-owned textile firms in China during the 1920s and 1930s. Despite Britain's domestic position as a world productivity leader, Japanese firms enjoyed a 70 percent productivity advantage over both British and Chinese competitors. The divergent performance of Japanese and British investments in China is explained by differences in management practice. Japanese firms had domestic experience with employment institutions similar to China's and applied labor management strategies that functioned well under these institutions. British firms lacked the institutional experience necessary to adapt management strategies to Chinese institutions. n the first half of the twentieth century, Japan rapidly absorbed industrial technologies from the West, while other Asian countries such as China and India lagged behind. In textiles, British managers and investors established plants in India, but productivity in these firms stagnated during the first half of the twentieth century, and many of these firms became unprofitable in the face of cheap imports from Japan. A key question in understanding twentieth century development is why Japanese firms were able to transform productivity levels in their economy, while other developing country firms, some run by experienced Western managers, failed. To understand this puzzle, I investigate attempts of British and Japanese firms to transfer textile technology to China during the 1920s and 1930s. The analysis reveals some of the pitfalls which

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“…The second is an institutional argument, namely, that the workers strike in response to manning reductions and demand to share in efficiency gains through higher wages. This cuts the gains from rationalization, but how the workers obtain such power in a low wage country with enormous labor turnover is not clear (Clark and Wolcott 1999;Wolcott 1994;Buchanan 1934). The third is no explanation at all.…”

Section: Who Gained From the Industrialmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Review of Gregory Clark'sA Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World

Allen

2008

Journal of Economic Literature

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A Farewell to Alms advances striking claims about the economic history of the world. These include (1) the preindustrial world was in a Malthusian preventive check equilibrium, (2) living standards were unchanging and above subsistence for the last 100,000 years, (3) bad institutions were not the cause of economic backwardness, (4) successful economic growth was due to the spread of “middle class” values from the elite to the rest of society for “biological” reasons, (5) workers were the big gainers in the British Industrial Revolution, and (6) the absence of middle class values, for biological reasons, explains why most of the world is poor. The empirical support for these claims is examined, and all are questionable.

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Why Nations Fail: Managerial Decisions and Performance in Indian Cotton Textiles, 1890–1938

Cited by 39 publications

References 11 publications

British Colonial Institutions and Economic Development in India

British Colonial Institutions and Economic Development in India

Do Local Institutions Affect All Foreign Investors in the Same Way? Evidence from the Interwar Chinese Textile Industry

A Review of Gregory Clark'sA Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World

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