ABSTRACT
The proportion of national income which was invested remained much the same as before, but since the 1850s more had gone abroad and less to home investment. When, in the 1880s, contemporaries first became aware of economic problems, they attributed them to what was known at the time as the 'Great Depresssion'. The probable reason for the price fall was the increased supply of food and raw materials, and increased efficiency in their production and distribution. Changes in the terms of trade were not solely attributable to British capital and labour, since the producer countries themselves had their own resources, and could also draw on other industrial countries. And just as labour productivity rises when the output produced rises faster than does the labour input, so total factor productivity (TFP) rises when output rises faster than the increase in the composite total of all inputs.
