supply side at center stage, affording little or no role for demand or overseas trade. Recently, alternative explanations … have placed an emphasis on the importance of trade with New World colonies, and the expanded supply of raw cotton it … for 1760 and 1850. Neither claim is supported. Trade was vital for the progress of the industrial revolution; but it was …

Many previous studies of the role of trade during the British Industrial Revolution have found little or no role for … trade in explaining British living standards or growth rates. We construct a three-region model of the world in which … that while trade had only a small impact on British welfare in the 1760s, it had a very large impact in the 1850s. This …

barriers to trade. But a backlash against this view now suggests that trade policies have little or no impact on growth. If … "getting policies right" is wrong or infeasible, this leaves only the more tenuous objective of "getting institutions right …" (Easterly 2005, Rodrik 2006). However, the empirical basis for judging recent trade reforms is weak. Econometrics are mostly ad …

Why do inefficient %uF818 non-growth enhancing %uF818 institutions emerge and persist? This paper develops a simple … framework to provide some answers to this question. Political institutions determine the allocation of political power, and … economic institutions determine the framework for policy-making and place constraints on various policies. Groups with …