Japanese exports between 1880 and 1910 increased massively in volume, changed composition, and shifted away from leading industrialized countries toward poorer Asian neighbors. The product mix also varied with the level of development of the destination, with new products and specializations...

In this chapter, we describe long-run trends in global merchandise trade and immigration from 1870 to 2010. We revisit the reasons why these two forces moved largely in parallel in the decades leading up to World War I, collapsed during the interwar period, and then rebounded (but with much more...

Bimetallism disappeared as a monetary regime in the 1870s. Flandreau (1996) clearly demonstrates that French bimetallism would have been able to withstand the German de-monetization of silver. Could it have withstood if many other countries in the world moved to the gold standard following in...

The classical gold standard period, 1880-1913, witnessed deep economic integration. High capital imports were related to better growth performance but may also have created greater volatility via financial crises. I first document the substantial output losses from various types of crises. I...

The classical gold standard only gradually became an international monetary regime after 1870. This paper provides a cross-country analysis of why countries adopted when they did. I use duration analysis to show that network externalities operating through trade channels help explain the pattern...

We study whether international trade fosters democracy. The likely endogeneity between democracy and trade is addressed via the gravity model of trade, allowing us to obtain a measure of natural openness. This serves as our instrumental variable for actual trade openness à la Frankel and Romer...

The Cobden-Chevalier treaty of 1860 eliminated many French import prohibitions and lowered tariffs between France and Britain. Policy change was largely unexpected and unusually free from direct lobbying. A series of commercial treaties with other nations followed because of the use of the...

In 1953 the Western Allied powers implemented a radical debt-relief plan that would, in due course, eliminate half of West Germany's external debt and create a series of favourable debt repayment conditions. The London Debt Agreement (LDA) correlated with West Germany experiencing the highest...

Interconnections between banking crises and fiscal crises have a long history. We document the long-run evolution from classic banking panics towards modern banking crises where financial guarantees are associated with crisis resolution. Recent crises feature a feedback loop between bank...