Can De-Industrialization Seriously
Damage Your Wealth?
A Review of Why Growth Rates Differ &
How to Improve Economic Performance

By N.F.R. Crafts
Mar. 1993
Institute of Economic Affairs
ISBN: 0-255-36316-8
92 p.
$26.50 Paper Original

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In Hobart Paper No. 120, Professor Nick Crafts, a distinguished economic historian from the University of Warwick, examines the evidence about growth rates in Britain as compared with other countries and also considers the case for an "industrial policy" which promotes British manufacturing industry.

He demonstrates the long-term nature of relative economic decline in Britain, but he shows also that there was some revival in the 1980's (especially of manufacturing output). The main 'industrial' problem which emerged in the 1980's was a significant deterioration in the manufacturing trade balance.

Some economists have claimed that government should help manufacturers by subsidies for investment, protection for 'infant industries' and intervention to correct 'market failures' - in other words, a return to the policy of picking winners which operated in the 1960's and 1970's when relative economic decline was at its worst.

Economics
Series: IEA Hobart Paper

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