ABSTRACT
The focus of debate on British economic decline has usually been the manufacturing sector. Yet recent research has shown that differences in national productivity levels, that is, in national income per head across countries of the western world, cannot easily be explained by trends in productivity in the manufacturing sector. They have to be sought in other parts of the economy. This chapter reports on research on the links between the infrastructure and industry in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, to shed light on that issue and on government policy.
