Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables and maps page
- Note on references
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction: the outlines of a debate
- 2 The performance of the French economy
- 3 Natural resources and the labour supply
- 4 Capital and technical progress
- 5 An agricultural revolution?
- 6 ‘The call of the markets’: the pressure of demand in the French economy
- 7 Social and institutional influences on development
- 8 Conclusion
- Notes
- Select bibliography
- Index
- New Studies in Economic and Social History
- Previously published as Studies in Economic History
- Economic History Society
4 - Capital and technical progress
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables and maps page
- Note on references
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction: the outlines of a debate
- 2 The performance of the French economy
- 3 Natural resources and the labour supply
- 4 Capital and technical progress
- 5 An agricultural revolution?
- 6 ‘The call of the markets’: the pressure of demand in the French economy
- 7 Social and institutional influences on development
- 8 Conclusion
- Notes
- Select bibliography
- Index
- New Studies in Economic and Social History
- Previously published as Studies in Economic History
- Economic History Society
Summary
Let us return for a moment to the assertion from Lévy-Leboyer that during the course of their industrialization the French and British economies ‘simply made maximum use of the factors of production available – in the one case labour, in the other capital’ [68, 292]. This implies that if the labour supply was a source of strength in France, capital was something of a weakness. There was indeed a time when the early start made by the British on the path of industrialization was attributed to an abundance of capital. Economic theory appeared to justify this interpretation, with models in which the rate of growth of output was determined by the level of investment. A common assertion was that a vital difference between ‘preindustrial’ and industrial economies was that the former saved and invested 4 or 5 per cent of national income, the latter a minimum of 12 to 15 per cent. But in the French case, econometricians have noted a disconcerting decline in the investment ratio during the late nineteenth century. A recent estimate shows the share of national product invested at home falling from 12.0 per cent in 1850–59 to 11.7 per cent in 1879 – and doing much the same again between the 1880s and the 1890s [79, 239], A promising explanation for French ‘stagnation’ looms on the horizon … However, another school of thought in economics countered by playing down the role of capital formation in economic growth, emphasizing instead the overwhelming impact of technical progress.
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- The Development of the French Economy 1750–1914 , pp. 25 - 35Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995