for the United States but also with reference to the wider world. We establish the outlines of international integration a … century ago and analyze the institutional and informational impediments that prevented the late nineteenth century world from … achieving the same degree of integration as today. We conclude that the world today is different: commercial and financial …

the weight of U.S. liabilities in the rest of the world''s stock of external assets. Finally, it relates the empirical …

advantage. Financial globalization then induces more specialization and more trade. The present framework yields explicit closed …