The standard source for pre-WWII global freight rate trends is the Isserlis British tramp shipping index. We think it is flawed, and that its sources offer vastly more information than the Isserlis aggregate contains. The new data confirm the precipitous decline in nominal freight rates before...

In the wake of the Great Depression, the Canadian government embarked on a stunning reversal in its commercial policy. A key element of its response was the promotion of intra-imperial trade at the Imperial Economic Conference of 1932. This paper addresses whether or not Canadian trade was able...

This paper documents industrial output growth around the poor periphery (Latin America, the European periphery, the Middle East and North Africa, Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa) between 1870 and 2007. We find that although the roots of rapid peripheral industrialization stretch into the late 19th...

This paper documents industrial output and labor productivity growth around the poor periphery 1870-1975 (Latin America, the European periphery, the Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia). Intensive and extensive industrial growth accelerated there over this critical century. The...

How much of the good growth performance in Latin America between 1870 and 1913 can be assigned to the forces of globalization? Why was industrialization so weak? Why was inequality on the rise? This paper offers an answer to these questions. It starts by exploring the disadvantages associated...

This paper uses history to explore the empirical content of two determinants of tariff policy that have a long pedigree: the Stolper-Samuelson corollary to the Heckscher-Ohlin theorem, and the infant-industry argument for protection. It reports a set of world tariff facts for the 150 years...

Brazil, Mexico and a few other Latin American republics enjoyed faster industrialization after 1870 than did the rest of Latin America and even faster than the rest of the poor periphery (except East Asia). How much of this economic performance was due to more accommodating institutions and...

The endogenous growth literature has explored the transition from a Malthusian world where real wages, living standards and labor productivity are all linked to factor endowments, to one where (endogenous) productivity change embedded in modern industrial growth breaks that link. Recently,...

The United States came close to complete autarky in 1808 as a result of a self-imposed embargo on international shipping from December 1807 to March 1809. Monthly prices of exported and imported goods reveal the embargo's striking effect on commodity markets and allow a calculation of its...

This paper uncovers a fact that has not been well appreciated: tariffs in Latin America were far higher than anywhere else in the century before the Great Depression. This is a surprising fact given that this region has been said to have exploited globalization forces better than most during the...