Will business cycles in the Euro Area converge: a critical survey of empirical research

The industrial revolution is mostly seen as a supply side phenomenon. Ever since Gilboy stated that factors of demand may have been equally important, scholars have stressed the importance of investments and technological change. This paper re-considers Gilboy’s ideas, using the dataset of the Dutch historical national accounts for the nineteenth century. Using a counterfactual VAR analysis, it is investigated to what extent changes in (determinants of) consumer demand may have affected patterns of industrial development.