Domestic Trade and Market Size in Late-Eighteenth-Century France

Abstract

This article tests whether smaller domestic markets can explain why France industrialized more slowly than Britain. To do so, it uses the Tableauxdu Maximum. It begins by presenting this source and then checks if the data from the source are plausible using a logit theoretical gravity equation. The results of this gravity equation are then employed to compute the expected market size of specific supply centers. Even if differences in real, nominal, and disposable income are taken into account, some French supply centers had access to domestic markets that were larger than the whole of Britain.