In a recent article, Ritschl (2008) criticized findings of Broadberry and Burhop (2007) regarding the comparative level of manufacturing labour productivity in Germany compared to Britain between 1895 and 1938. In this paper, we re-evaluate Ritschl's claims and show that our earlier results are broadly consistent with the historical data. Our new results show that labour productivity in German manufacturing in 1907 was about 8.4 percent higher than in Britain. This is slightly different from our earlier finding of a German productivity advantage of only 5 percent, but substantially below Ritschl's claim of a 20-28 percent German productivity lead.
No takes yet. Share an insight, caveat, or question.
Broadberry et al. (2008) studied this question.