IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ehsrev/v70y2017i4p1321-1345.html

The impact of ‘stop‐go’ demand management policy on Britain's consumer durables industries, 1952–65

Author

Listed:
  • Peter M. Scott
  • James T. Walker

Abstract

This article examines the impacts of British government ‘stop‐go’ policy on domestic sales of consumer durables over the period 1952–65, via hire purchase restrictions and punitive Purchase Tax rates. Our analysis includes a general review of contemporary evidence regarding the impacts of these measures, a more detailed study of the television sector, and time‐series econometric analysis for both televisions and a representative high‐ticket labour‐saving consumer durable: washing machines. We find that the restrictions had devastating impacts on Britain's consumer durables industries, preventing firms from fully exploiting economies of scale, reducing output growth and international competitiveness, and eroding industrial relations. Government officials were aware of these problems, but considered them a price worth paying to facilitate moves towards sterling convertibility and the re‐establishment of the City as a leading financial and trading centre.

Suggested Citation

  • Peter M. Scott & James T. Walker, 2017. "The impact of ‘stop‐go’ demand management policy on Britain's consumer durables industries, 1952–65," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 70(4), pages 1321-1345, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ehsrev:v:70:y:2017:i:4:p:1321-1345
    DOI: 10.1111/ehr.12470
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.12470
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/ehr.12470?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Arnold M. Soloway, 1954. "Economic Aspects Of The British Purchase Tax," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 9(2), pages 188-208, May.
    2. Schenk,Catherine R., 2013. "The Decline of Sterling," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107612990, August.
    3. Whitney Newey & Kenneth West, 2014. "A simple, positive semi-definite, heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation consistent covariance matrix," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 33(1), pages 125-132.
    4. Broadberry,Steve N., 2005. "The Productivity Race," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521023580.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Alex Ilek & Tanya Suchoy & Nir Klein, 2006. "Estimating the premium implicit in the yields of Treasury Bills," Israel Economic Review, Bank of Israel, vol. 4(2), pages 53-83.
    2. Chang, Eric C. & Cheng, Joseph W. & Khorana, Ajay, 2000. "An examination of herd behavior in equity markets: An international perspective," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 24(10), pages 1651-1679, October.
    3. Narayan, Seema & Narayan, Paresh Kumar & Tobing, Lutzardo, 2021. "Has tourism influenced Indonesia’s current account?," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 225-237.
    4. Stephen Brown & William Goetzmann & Bing Liang & Christopher Schwarz, 2008. "Mandatory Disclosure and Operational Risk: Evidence from Hedge Fund Registration," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(6), pages 2785-2815, December.
    5. Aslanidis, Nektarios & Christiansen, Charlotte, 2012. "Smooth transition patterns in the realized stock–bond correlation," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 19(4), pages 454-464.
    6. Croce, M.M. & Nguyen, Thien T. & Raymond, S. & Schmid, L., 2019. "Government debt and the returns to innovation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 132(3), pages 205-225.
    7. Cho, Guedae & Kim, MinKyoung & Koo, Won W., 2003. "Relative Agricultural Price Changes In Different Time Horizons," 2003 Annual meeting, July 27-30, Montreal, Canada 22249, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    8. Veasna Trakem & Hongzhong Fan & Dyna Sam & Sokhan Chen, 2026. "How do agricultural trade liberalization, climate variability and change, and governance quality influence food security in ASEAN?," Food Security: The Science, Sociology and Economics of Food Production and Access to Food, Springer;The International Society for Plant Pathology, vol. 18(2), pages 495-540, April.
    9. David Hirshleifer & Danling Jiang, 2010. "A Financing-Based Misvaluation Factor and the Cross-Section of Expected Returns," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(9), pages 3401-3436.
    10. Shi, Huai-Long & Zhou, Wei-Xing, 2022. "Factor volatility spillover and its implications on factor premia," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    11. Bonciani, Dario, 2015. "Estimating the effects of uncertainty over the business cycle," MPRA Paper 65921, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Joshy Easaw & Roberto Golinelli, 2022. "Professionals Inflation Forecasts: The Two Dimensions Of Forecaster Inattentiveness [“Sectoral and aggregate inflation dynamics in the euro area”]," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 74(3), pages 701-720.
    13. Scalco, Paulo R. & Braga, Marcelo J., 2015. "Identification of Market Power in Bilateral Oligopoly: The Brazilian Wholesale Market of UHT Milk," 2015 Conference, August 9-14, 2015, Milan, Italy 212278, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    14. Timo Korkeamaki & Danielle Xu, 2015. "Institutional Investors and Foreign Exchange Risk," Quarterly Journal of Finance (QJF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 5(03), pages 1-33, September.
    15. Marcelo Fernandes & Breno Neri, 2010. "Nonparametric Entropy-Based Tests of Independence Between Stochastic Processes," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(3), pages 276-306.
    16. Gu, Chen & Kurov, Alexander & Wolfe, Marketa Halova, 2018. "Relief Rallies after FOMC Announcements as a Resolution of Uncertainty," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 1-18.
    17. Bierens, H.J. & Broersma, L., 1991. "The relation between unemployment and interest rate : some international evidence," Serie Research Memoranda 0112, VU University Amsterdam, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Econometrics.
    18. Karen E. Dynan & Douglas W. Elmendorf, 2001. "Do provisional estimates of output miss economic turning points?," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2001-52, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    19. Xu, Zhiwei & Yang, Yinan & Zhang, Teng, 2026. "Investor disagreement and state-dependent mispricing: New evidence on the analyst dispersion anomaly," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 182(C).
    20. Nicholas Apergis & Irene Fafaliou, 2014. "The determinants of business start-ups in tertiary education: evidence for Greece through a panel data approach," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 38(2), pages 287-301, April.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:ehsrev:v:70:y:2017:i:4:p:1321-1345. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ehsukea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.