TY  - JOUR
AU  - Clark,Gregory
AU  - O'Rourke,Kevin H.
AU  - Taylor,Alan M.
TI  - Made in America? The New World, the Old, and the Industrial Revolution
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 14077
PY  - 2008
Y2  - June 2008
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14077
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14077.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Gregory Clark
Department of Economics
University of California, Davis
One Shields Avenue
Davis, CA 95616
E-Mail: gclark@ucdavis.edu

Kevin H. O'Rourke
Department of Economics and IIIS
Trinity College
Dublin 2, IRELAND
Tel:  00353 1 896 3594
Fax: 353-1-6772503
E-Mail: kevin.orourke@tcd.ie

Alan M. Taylor
Department of Economics
University of California, Davis
One Shields Avenue
Davis, CA 95616
Tel: 530/752-1572
Fax: 530/752-9382
E-Mail: amtaylor@ucdavis.edu
AB  - For two decades, the consensus explanation of the British Industrial Revolution has placed technological change and the supply side at center stage, affording little or no role for demand or overseas trade. Recently, alternative explanations have placed an emphasis on the importance of trade with New World colonies, and the expanded supply of raw cotton it provided. We test both hypotheses using calibrated general equilibrium models of the British economy and the rest of the world for 1760 and 1850. Neither claim is supported. Trade was vital for the progress of the industrial revolution; but it was trade with the rest of the world, not the American colonies, that allowed Britain to export its rapidly expanding textile output and achieve growth through extreme specialization in response to shifting comparative advantage. 
ER  -