Italian Industrial Production, 1861 1913: A Statistical Reconstruction. K. The Construction Industries

This paper is the eleventh section of Italian Industrial Production, 1861 1913: A Statistical Reconstruction (in progress). It documents the derivation, from the historical sources, of the time series that track the 1911-price value added of the construction industries. The path of railway and tramway construction is estimated from physical indicators. Construction to extend the (major/minor) railways and (urban/suburban, machine/horse) tramways is estimated from the annual completed mileage of the various networks, and the corresponding maintenance is estimated from track length and use; construction for (railway-net) improvements is indexed by rail consumption in excess of that required for network extensions. The new construction and maintenance of other public works are estimated from the expenditure figures in the national and local budgets, significantly corrected for changes in accounting rules, suitably scaled and deflated. The new construction and maintenance of private social overhead capital are estimated in part as expenditure (calculated for example from the matching public subsidy for land-reclamation projects), suitably deflated, and in part from physical indicators (for example of the additions to the productive capacity and distribution networks of the private utilities). The new construction and maintenance of private residential and commercial buildings are calculated by deflating assessment-based estimates of the gross additions to the stock, and of the stock itself, allowing for the buildings that were statutorily exempt. An index of urban construction is also estimated from the binder-consumption data available for a few dozen cities.