By the 1820s, as a result of the protracted struggle with France, the market value of the British Government debt was twice British GDP. It has been argued that this debt represented a huge institutional failure by the government, significantly slowing growth in the Industrial Revolution period by crowding out private investment. This article constructs measures of private rates of return in the years 1725 1839 and shows these imply that neither the government deficits nor the mounting debt are associated with much higher private rates of return on capital. The reason the government could issue so much debt without raising rates of return is unclear. One possibility is that crowding out was occurring, but population growth in 1770 1839 was reducing rental income as a fraction of GDP, creating a demand for other asset income so that we do not observe tightness in capital markets.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Volume (Year): 5 (2001) Issue (Month): 03 (December) Pages: 403-436 Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML
(with abstract),
plain text
(with abstract),
BibTeX,
RIS (EndNote, RefMan, ProCite),
ReDIF
Contact details of provider: Postal: The Edinburgh Building, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 2RU UK Fax: +44 (0)1223 325150 Email: Web page: http://journals.cambridge.org/jid_ERE
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Mike Eden).
Related research
Keywords:
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)