| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 104.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 104.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Comparative/World

S. N. Broadberry. The Productivity Race: British Manufacturing in International Perspective, 1850–1990. New York: Cambridge University Press. 1997. Pp. xxv, 451. $74.95.

This book presents a magisterial survey of the record of manufacturing productivity in Britain since the mid-nineteenth century, set against American and German experience. The methodological structure is provided by comparative benchmark levels of labor productivity for the three countries at a highly disaggregated level. Thus, for the period since 1907, seventy-seven industries are covered at regular intervals. The benchmarks are based on value added converted at purchasing power parity adjusted price ratios for the postwar years combined with physical indicators for the period to 1939. On the basis of productivity levels in individual industries, S. N. Broadberry is then able to construct benchmark estimates for the manufacturing sector as a whole coinciding with census of production years. The resulting analysis is consistent with the broad conclusion that although British labor productivity has declined relatively and substantially at the level of the whole economy since the mid-nineteenth century, comparative productivity in the manufacturing sector has remained stable. Whilst U.S. manufacturing productivity has generally run at double the British level, the German productivity record has been broadly in conformity with that in Britain. One major implication of this is that explanations of Britain's relative economic decline cannot be laid at the door of comparative labor productivity in manufacturing. The explanation, therefore, must lie in other sectoral trends in combination with long-term structural change. . . .

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