No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Factors in a British Trade Cycle
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 February 2011
Extract
R. C. O. Matthews' full-length study of British fluctuations in the 1830's is good history and good economic analysis. There is no equivalent book on a single cyclical passage, not even excepting the great interwar boom and slump in the United States.
- Type
- Notes and Review Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Economic History Association 1954
References
1 A Study in Trade-Cycle History, Economic Fluctuations in Great Britain, 1833-42. By Matthews, R. C. O.. N.Y.: Cambridge University Press, 1954. Pp. iz, 228. $5.00.Google Scholar
2 In our 1952 Addendum to Arthur Gayer's 1941 Preface to The Growth and fluctuation of the British Economy, 1790-1850 (pp. xiii–xiv)Google Scholar Mrs. Schwartz and I sought to underline this limitation in our own work, completed more than a decade earlier.
3 See, for example, Evans, G. H., Business Incorporations in the United States, 1800-1943, New York: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1948, Chapter 3.Google Scholar
4 There are three issues of detail in Mr. Matthews' partial analyses on which I would have reservations. First, his treatment of the admirable correlation between British imports and British exports to areas other than the United States and northern Europe. This disaggregated treatment of exports is all to the good; and the author is too able an economist to hold to the simple view that British imports furnished the foreign exchange to finance these exports. He tracks out all manner of difficulties in interpreting the correlation (pp. 78-83). Nevertheless, it fascinates him. And it ought, perhaps, to be firmly said that it demonstrates in the present state of knowledge merely that British exports were linked in a variety of ways to British domestic fluctuations, which were in turn linked in a variety of ways to foreign trade and finance. It is peculiarly inappropriate to contrast the implications of this correlation with the inventory behavior of the other elements in British exports, given the well-established role of inventory fluctuations in British imports. Second, the response of the British banking system, and notably the Bank of England, to post-turning point liquidity requirements is curiously missing from his story. Third, as the Gayer study makes clear, the case for March 1839 as an upper turning point is somewhat more substantial than Mr. Matthews makes out (p. 213), although, of course, it is subject to legitimate debate.