Italian Industrial Production, 1861-1913: A Statistical Reconstruction. E. The Metalmaking Industries

This paper is the fifth section of Italian Industrial Production, 1861 1913: A Statistical Reconstruction (in progress). It documents the derivation, from the historical sources, of the four time series that trace the physical product of the ferrous-metals industry, of the further 12 series that trace the physical product of the non-ferrous-metals industries, and of the corresponding estimates of value added per unit at 1911 prices. The pig iron and rail series are taken almost directly from the sources; the semi-finished wrought iron and steel series extensively corrects the figures in the sources over the later decades, and is estimated from the apparent consumption of pig and scrap, allowing for cast iron, over the early ones; the cast iron series is estimated by interpolating widely separated benchmarks on the assumption that the ratio of cast iron to wrought iron and steel in final consumption followed a smoothly declining path. The non-ferrous-metal ingot production series are taken relatively directly from the sources; the corresponding semi-finished-metal series are typically estimated from the apparent consumption of ingot and scrap metal.