https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2558967

Harvard professor Jeffrey G. Williamson passed away on August 29, 2026, at the age of 90. He served as the Laird Bell Professor of Economics (Emeritus) at Harvard University and was an honorary fellow at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Specialized in the economic history of the international economy, he studied global migration and historical inequality.

As stated in the title.

Before becoming hyper focused on banking and real estate I am of the notion that Hong Kong had a robust and possibly extremely outsized production economy. To thr point that it was ranked high in some specific sectors.

Is this notion correct?

Correct or not, was it robust?

If it was robust how did they manage considering it is a micro nation/colony without large areas for farming, factories, refineries or warehouses?

Was it a place that assembled good as opposed to processing (semi) processed materials?

Generally what is the history of the Hong Kong economy from, say, 1910 to now?

Including the transition to majority banking and real estate.

Book suggestions on the topic are welcome.

Thank you.

Would love to know more about who their customers would be, how much they may have earned and how they lived off of that. Any info about the broader fishing industry would be greatly appreciated too.
Thank you!

After the trillions invested, and countless 12 hour shifts by underpaid workers, what have we built?

Countless economies across the world are near collapse or have budget and standard of living crises. All the progress of the last 200 years is a complete failure.

Across textiles, cutlery, shipbuilding, and a much broader range of industries, American production eroded through successive waves of foreign competition after World War II. Light bulbs followed a strikingly different path.

U.S. factories remained competitive despite high wages, and China accounted for less than 3% of lamp imports as late as 1989.

I wrote this article to examine why the industry resisted foreign competition for so long—and why that resilience suddenly broke down during the transition from incandescent bulbs to CFLs and LEDs. It draws on an FTC history of the electric-lamp industry, MIT industry research, and federal records on lighting-efficiency policy.

Are there other industries that resisted imports for decades and then declined just as quickly?

https://puresource.substack.com/p/china-didnt-kill-american-light-bulbs