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Does Manufacturing Matter?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2020

David G. Mayes
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Extract

It is a trivial truth that manufacturing matters while at current relative prices there are plenty of willing purchasers of manufactured goods. The question addressed in this article is whether it is important how much of that demand for manufactures is met from UK sources. There seem to be three general lines of argument which have been pursued. The first is that if manufacturing is low in relative importance then, since the UK is an open economy, it is relatively difficult for other sectors to generate the foreign exchange necessary to pay for the desired net imports of manufactures. In these circumstances the balance of payments acts as a brake on economic growth. The second line of argument is that because of its inherently faster rate of growth of productivity, particularly at the high technology end of the spectrum, an emphasis on manufacturing allows the economy to grow faster. The third argument is largely distributional; namely, that a decline in manufacturing would have wide knock-on effects on other firms and on employment.

Type
Other
Information
National Institute Economic Review , Volume 122 , November 1987 , pp. 47 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © 1987 National Institute of Economic and Social Research

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Footnotes

The four articles which follow were written for a conference held at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research on 30 September 1987. The title of the conference was ‘Manufacturing in Britain’. The views expressed are the authors‘ own and should not be taken to represent either the views of the organisations for which they work or those of the National Institute's Editorial Board.

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