The existence, timing, and possible causes of the British industrial revolution are considered by investigating the time series properties of industrial production and various explanatory variables. Utilising two types of robust cointegration-based causality tests we argue that domestic forces,...

Testing for unit roots and the related issue of measuring shock persistence has attracted considerable theoretical and applied econometric interest. The issue of the size of the random walk component raised by Cochrane (Journal of Political Economy, 96, 893-920, 1988) has been extended in the...

Annual estimates of productivity are reported for periods over 500 years for eight countries and for five other countries over shorter periods. One- and two-break time series models are used to investigate discontinuities in productivity growth. The results support two-break models of long-run...