Market Services and the Productivity Race, 1850–2000
Market Services and the Productivity Race, 1850–2000

Author: Stephen Broadberry

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2006-10-26

Total Pages: 27

ISBN-13: 1139460943

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Now that services account for such a dominant part of economic activity, it has become apparent that achieving high levels of productivity in the economy requires high levels of productivity in services. This book offers a major reassessment of Britain's comparative productivity performance over the last 150 years. Whereas in the mid-nineteenth century Britain had higher productivity than the United States and Germany, by 1990 both countries had overtaken Britain. The key to achieving high productivity was the 'industrialisation' of market services, which involved both the serving of business and the provision of mass-market consumer services in a more business like fashion. Comparative productivity varied with the uneven spread of industrialised service sector provision across sectors. Stephen Broadberry provides a quantitative overview of these trends, together with a qualitative account of developments within individual sectors, including shipping, railways, road and air transport, telecommunications, wholesale and retail distribution, banking, and finance.

Macroeconomics and Financial Crises
Macroeconomics and Financial Crises

Author: Gary B. Gorton

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2023-07-11

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 0691227020

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How financial crises are inherent features of macroeconomic dynamics There are no bigger disruptions in the functioning of economies than financial crises. Yet prior to the crash of 2007–2008, macroeconomics incorporated financial crises simply as bad shocks, like earthquakes, failing to consider them as an intrinsic phenomenon of the evolution of macroeconomic variables, such as credit, investment, and productivity. Macroeconomics and Financial Crises rethinks how technological change, credit booms, and endogenous information production combine to generate financial crises as inherent and recurrent reactions to macroeconomic dynamics. Gary Gorton and Guillermo Ordoñez identify short-term debt, collateral, and information as common elements that are present in all financial crises. Short-term debt is a critical element for storing value over short periods without fear of loss, but there needs to be collateral backing the debt. Critically, the collateral should be such that no agent wants to produce information about its quality. The debt backed by such collateral is information-insensitive. Gorton and Ordoñez argue that, during a credit boom, as more and more firms get loans, the economy reaches a tipping point where information production becomes too tempting, disrupting short-term debt and cutting most firms out of the credit market. Showing how a financial crisis is an information event triggered by the dynamics of macroeconomic variables, Macroeconomics and Financial Crises provides new perspectives on the intricate relations between macroeconomics and financial crises.