The paper discusses the role of crude oil prices as an important cost factor for individual and collective mobility. After a short introduction, there will be three further sections. Section 2 covers a general discussion of the relevance of oil today and also several scenarios for the future...

"We use a new measure of total trade costs at the bilateral country level to examine the change in international trade integration between 1870 and 1913. Trade costs are lowest amongst the most developed countries and highest in the peripheral and poor countries. On average, our measure declined...