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The Effectiveness of Canada's Navy on Escort Duty

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  • Skogstad, Karl

Abstract

This paper examines the potential costs a country faces when it fails to develop domestic arms manufacturing. I examine these costs using the historical example of Canada's decision to not develop domestic naval shipbuilding capacity prior to World War II. Canada's primary naval responsibility during the war was to escort convoys between the United Kingdom and North America. However its lack of advanced domestic shipbuilding capacity and congestion at Allied shipyards, meant that Canada could not obtain the relatively advanced destroyer class vessels necessary for convoy duty. Instead it had to rely on less advanced corvette class vessels, which were simple enough to be manufactured domestically. Using a unique data set, created for this project, I match convoy movements to German U-boat locations in order to examine the escort composition and the number of merchant ships lost when an engagement occurred. Using this data I find that destroyers were 2.14 more effective than corvettes at preventing the loss of a merchant ship. Then, by constructing a counterfactual scenario, I find that developing a domestic ship building industry in Canada would have netted the Allies a benefit of 28.7 million 1940 Canadian dollars.

Suggested Citation

  • Skogstad, Karl, 2015. "The Effectiveness of Canada's Navy on Escort Duty," MPRA Paper 61467, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:61467
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Glaser, Darrell J. & Rahman, Ahmed S., 2016. "Ex Tridenti Mercatus? Sea-power and maritime trade in the age of globalization," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 95-111.
    2. Alberto Abadie & Javier Gardeazabal, 2003. "The Economic Costs of Conflict: A Case Study of the Basque Country," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 113-132, March.
    3. Gregory Hildebrandt, 1999. "The military production function," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 10(3), pages 247-272.
    4. Rahman, Ahmed S., 2010. "Fighting the forces of gravity - Seapower and maritime trade between the 18th and 20th centuries," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 28-48, January.
    5. Rebecca Achee Thornton & Peter Thompson, 2001. "Learning from Experience and Learning from Others: An Exploration of Learning and Spillovers in Wartime Shipbuilding," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1350-1368, December.
    6. Mark Harrison, 1988. "Resource mobilization for World War II: the U.S.A., U.K., U.S.S.R., and Germany, 1938-1945′," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 41(2), pages 171-192, May.
    7. Richard Williams, 2012. "Using the margins command to estimate and interpret adjusted predictions and marginal effects," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 12(2), pages 308-331, June.
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    Cited by:

    1. Karl Skogstad & Robert J. Petrunia, 2019. "The impact of labour policies on Canadian gold mines in World War II," Cliometrica, Springer;Cliometric Society (Association Francaise de Cliométrie), vol. 13(2), pages 163-200, May.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Domestic Arms Industries; World War II; Canadian Navy; Convoys.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F51 - International Economics - - International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy - - - International Conflicts; Negotiations; Sanctions
    • F52 - International Economics - - International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy - - - National Security; Economic Nationalism
    • H56 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - National Security and War
    • H57 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Procurement
    • N42 - Economic History - - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation - - - U.S.; Canada: 1913-

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