This paper addresses two important topics in recent economic historiography: globalization and the great divergence. We first present a search for statistical evidence in the Far East of an “Early Globalization” comparable to the one ongoing in the West since the mid-eighteenth century....

In addition to standard trade gains, regional trade agreements (RTAs) can promote peaceful relations by increasing the opportunity cost of conflicts. Country pairs with large trade gains from RTAs and a high probability of conflict should be more likely to sign an RTA. Using data from 1950 to...

What is the connection between different forms of globalization, economic growth, and welfare? International trade, cross-border capital flows, and labor movements are three areas in which economic historians have focused their research. I critically summarize various measures of international...

This chapter surveys empirically the broad features of trade policy in goods for 31 major economies that collectively represented 83% of the world's population and 91% of the world's GDP in 2013. We address five questions: Do some countries have more liberal trading regimes than others? Within...

What is the connection between different forms of globalization, economic growth, and welfare? International trade, cross-border capital flows, and labor movements are three areas in which economic historians have focused their research. I critically summarize various measures of international...

Using a detailed data set at the tariff line level, we find an emulator effect of multilateralism on subsequent regional trade agreements involving the US. We exploit the variation in the frequency with which the US has granted immediate duty free access (IDA) to its Free Trade Area partners...

We focus on two international aspects of the Great Depression--financial crises and international trade-- and try to discern lessons for the current economic crisis. Both downturns featured global banking crises which were generated by boom-slump macroeconomic cycles. During both crises, world...

Theory is ambiguous as to how globalization influences the relative performances of rich and poor countries. This paper surveys some recent literature on the historical links between international commodity and factor market integration and convergence. Focusing on the late nineteenth century, a...

How much of China’s recent economic performance can be attributed to market-oriented reforms introduced in the last two decades? A long-run perspective may be important for understanding the process of economic development occurring today. This Paper compares the integration of rice markets in...

Using data collected by the International Institute of Agriculture, we document the disintegration of international commodity markets between 1913 and 1938. There was dramatic disintegration during World War I, gradual reintegration during the 1920s, and then a very substantial disintegration...