This paper studies the economic consequences of the West's foray into China after the Opium War (1839-42), when Western colonial influence was introduced in dozens of so-called treaty ports. We document a turnaround during the 19th century in the nature of China's capital markets. Whereas before...

The First Opium War (1840-42) was a watershed in the history of China. In its aftermath Britain and other countries forced open new ports to foreign trade through international treaties. Chinese institutions of trade were abolished and re-organized under Western management, Western legal...

This paper studies the trade of China in the past 150 years, starting from the first opening of China after the Opium War. The main purpose of the paper is to identify what is (and was) China's 'normal' level of foreign trade, and how these levels changed under different trade regimes, from 1840...

Prevailing views suggest the Industrial Revolution began in Europe because markets had gradually become more efficient and by the 18th century the scope of economic activity was far larger than in other parts of the world. This paper compares the actual performance of markets in Europe and...

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...

This paper studies international joint ventures, where foreign direct investment is performed by a foreign and a domestic firm that together set up a new firm, the joint venture. Employing administrative data on all international joint ventures in China from 1998 to 2007--roughly a quarter of...

Uneven development within countries suggests that domestic trade frictions are important. Trade flows within a country, however, are rarely observed. We employ a new dataset on trade between fifteen Chinese treaty ports to examine the importance of domestic frictions around the year 1900. The...

Based on the most comprehensive grain prices available, we employ a storage model to estimate consistent interest rates and compare capital market development in Britain and China. Interest rates for Britain were lower than China's on average by about three percentage points from 1770 to 1860....

In this paper, we provide aggregate trends in China's trade performance from the 1840s to the present. Based on historical benchmarks, we argue that China's recent gains are not exclusively due to the reforms since 1978. Rather, foreign economic activity can be understood by developments that...

In the marriage market, families make investments on behalf of their young so that they are able to form a household with their preferred partner. We analyze marriage markets in a central region of China between about 1300 and 1850 through the lens of a model of marriage matching and...