[...]The loss of manufacturing jobs has created a widespreadsense that manufacturing in New York City has nofuture, that the decline is unstoppable and “largely inevitableand foreordained” (Fitch 1993, p. 107). Even theoptimistic report of the Commission on the Year 2000,New York Ascendant,...

In an influential article Saxonhouse and Wright argued that the quality of local cottonwas the single most important factor in explaining national preferences for ring ormule spinning. For Britain, they argue that mills using more flexible mule spindlescould exploit arbitrage opportunities...

This paper re-examines theories previously advanced to explain Lancashire’s slowadoption of ring spinning. New cost estimates show that although additionaltransport costs and technical complementarities between certain types of machinereduced ring adoption rates, these supply side constraints...