This paper presents time series of tariff rates in Australia from the time of Federation. As a preliminary to the construction of economy-wide series, it constructs series for three broadly representative goods throughout the 100 years; passenger motor vehicles, blankets and beer. It then...

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...

Canada's trade policy at the end of the 19th century is commonly viewed as protectionist and extremely costly. In this paper, we employ the AndersonNeary Trade Restrictiveness Index to reexamine this view. Based on productlevel customs data, we show that Canadian trade policy between 1870 and...

This paper argues that a geographical perspectie is fundamental to understanding comparative economic development in the context of globalization. Central to this view is the role of agglomeration in productivity performance; size and location matter. The tools of the new economic geography are...

Motivated by theoretical arguments (see e.g. Romer (2010) and Mokyr (2008)) that assert a positive impact of institutions on R&D, this paper aims to provide some empirical analysis on the relationship between the two variables. In particular, using a core sample of 98 countries over the period...

We argue for a new approach to examining the relationship between tariffs and growth. We demonstrate that more can be learned from time series analyses of the experience of individual countries rather than the usual panel data approach, which imposes a causal relation and presents an average...

We take up again the famous case of the trade in wheat between the United States and the United Kingdom. This is often used to illustrate the so-called first era of globalization at the end of the nineteenth century. This study, however, finds evidence of transatlantic commodity market...

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 provide answers to the following questions: When and where did rapid industrial growth begin...

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...