Does trade within a country affect welfare and productivity? What are the magnitude and consequences of costs to such trade? To answer these questions, we exploit unique Canadian data to measure internal trade costs in a variety of ways – they are large, and vary across sectors and...

'We employ the Anderson-Neary Trade Restrictiveness Index (TRI) to examine Canadian trade policy during the first wave of globalization (1870-1913). Our analysis is the first to examine two important features of this period using the TRI: 1) the shift to protectionist trade policies, and 2) the...

International trade increases productivity; internal trade should too. The size and consequences of internal trade barriers are unfortunately not well known. Using unique Canadian data and multiple approaches to measure trade costs, we find internal trade barriers are large, especially for poor...

Agriculture in poor countries has low productivity, high employment, and negligible trade flows relative to other sectors. These facts motivate a multi-sector, open-economy view of international productivity differences. With a quantitative multi-country model featuring nonhomothetic...

Like trade between countries, trade within countries is costly; unlike between countries, gains from trade within countries depend on migration and taxes, as gains through higher wages have tax consequences that gains through lower prices do not. We confirm the first point and flexibly measure...

Does trade within a country affect welfare and productivity? What are the magnitude and consequences of costs to such trade? To answer these questions, we exploit unique Canadian data to measure internal trade costs in a variety of ways – they are large, and vary across sectors and...

In the 16th century, North America contained 25-30 million buffalo; by the late 19th century less than 100 remained. While removing the buffalo east of the Mississippi took settlers over 100 years, the remaining 10 to 15 million buffalo on the Great Plains were killed in a punctuated slaughter...