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LIT-1489: Temporary Protection and Technology Adoption: Evidence from the Napoleonic Blockade

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Properties6
StatusActive — read in full 2026-10-24 (NOTE-1122) from the author's working draft of 17 December 2015, not the version of record; worth reading as the first well-identified evidence that temporary protection can leave a lasting industry behind it. Departments more shielded from British trade by the Napoleonic blockade built more mechanized cotton spinning, kept a larger industry through 1887 and had more productive firms in 1840; industrial value added was higher in 1860 and not detectably from 1896. The long-run instrument is weak (first-stage F mostly below 10). The protection was a war blockade followed by post-war tariffs, not a temporary tariff lifted, and what persisted was the industry, not the protection.
Version2
Tagssocial-science, society-and-governance
SupportsCLAIM-445 — A protective regime, in a person, an institution or a system of states, becomes self-maintaining when the interventions it authorizes shift the evidence used to judge its necessity, the authority and resources of those who judge it, the capacities of its constituents or the threat environment itself in ways that favour its continuation; this can happen when the original threat was real and the first protection apt, and it is a failure only where the regime has become less responsive to evidence that it is no longer needed
Cited as “paper” byNOTE-1122 — Juhász — Temporary protection and technology adoption (December 2015 draft)
Cited as “source” byTHEORY-919 — Departments of the French Empire more shielded from British trade by the Napoleonic blockade added more mechanized cotton-spinning capacity during it and kept a larger industry through 1887, with more productive spinning firms in 1840 and higher industrial value added per capita in 1860 but not detectably from 1896

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Juhász, R. (2018). Temporary protection and technology adoption: Evidence from the Napoleonic blockade. American Economic Review 108(11): 3339–3376. doi:10.1257/aer.20151730.

Key takeaways

From the reading, NOTE-1122. Page numbers are the December 2015 draft’s.

  • Short run. The interquartile difference in the blockade’s trade-cost shock predicts extra spinning capacity about equal to mean capacity in 1812, with no pre-trend and no effect on wool or leather (pp. 27–32).
  • Long run. One more spindle in 1812 meant 2–3 more in 1840 and 5–6 in 1887; firms were more productive in 1840; industrial value added was higher in 1860 only (pp. 36–38).
  • Weak instrument. “The Kleibergen-Papp F-statistic for the first stage is generally below 10” (p. 35).
  • Not a policy. Napoleon “remained highly ambivalent of developments in the cotton industry” (p. 24), and after the wars “tariff and non-tariff trade barriers were put in place between the two countries” (p. 33).

Why this is here

The exchange cited it at turn U16 as evidence that a temporary, crisis-born measure can leave a lasting structure behind it. The abstract supports that, with the limit it states: the advantage faded by the later nineteenth century.

Corrected 2026-10-24, from the reading. The lasting structure is the industry’s location and productivity, not the protection, and the claim’s “temporary tariff” is not what happened: protection came from a war blockade aimed at Britain, and post-war tariffs kept France protected, so the within-France results compare regions under continued national protection. The reading supports CLAIM-445’s capability-building contrast and says nothing about whether protection maintained itself, though a petition by large spinners for a complete ban on English cloth (p. 13, fn. 7) shows the constituency forming. Filed from it: THEORY-919.

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