ABSTRACT
A quarter century ago D.McCloskey observed that few beliefs are so well established in the credo of British economic history as the belief that the late Victorians failed (McCloskey 1970, p. 446). Subsequent debate has weakened the fundamentalism, but the search for a widely accepted characterization of Britain’s economic performance during the late Victorian and Edwardian era has not yielded consensus. Indeed, entrenched images are hard to dislodge, and historical accounts of the late nineteenth century British economy remain dominated by discussions of failure (Floud 1994, p.1). Within these debates, optimistic interpretations of late Victorian performance have gained credence as the criteria for making judgements have been specified more carefully (Pollard 1989). This chapter seeks to strengthen further the basis for assessing performance by utilizing recent developments in econometric time series analysis to investigate the allegation that the late Victorians failed.
