Did adoption of the gold standard exacerbate or diminish macroeconomic volatility? Supporters thought so, critics thought not, and theory offers ambiguous messages. A hard exchange-rate regime such as the gold standard might limit monetary shocks if it ties the hands of policy makers. But any...

We introduce a new dataset on British exports at the bilateral, commodity-level from 1700 to 1899. We then pit two primary determinants of bilateral trade against one another: the trade-diminishing effects of distance versus the trade-enhancing effects of the British Empire. We find that gravity...

For all its importance, there still is no comprehensive quantitative assessment of the Suez Canal's opening in 1869. We find that it led to a 72% relative increase in bilateral exports for affected country pairs and a likely permanent increase in world trade. With respect to the composition of...

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...

What precisely were the causes and consequences of the trade wars in the 1930s? Were there perhaps deeper forces at work in reorienting global trade prior to the outbreak of World War II? And what lessons may this particular historical episode provide for the present day? To answer these...

We provide evidence on the dynamic effects of fuel price shocks, shipping demand shocks, and shipping supply shocks on real dry bulk freight rates in the long run. We first analyze a new dataset on dry bulk freight rates for the period from 1850 to 2020, finding that they followed a downward but...

Federal prohibition from 1920 to 1933 was one of the most ambitious policy interventions in US history. However, due to the political concessions necessary to bring about repeal, the removal of restrictions on alcohol after 1933 was not uniform. Using new data on city-level variation in alcohol...

Despite a recent and dramatic re-evaluation of the health consequences of alcohol consumption, very little is known about the effects of in utero exposure to alcohol on long-run outcomes such as later-life mortality. Here, we investigate how state by year variation in alcohol control arising...

This paper examines the history of foreign investment in Latin America in the two centuries since independence. Investment flows to the region were sometimes large and always volatile. Symptoms of overborrowing, sudden stops, debt, default and crises have been evident from the beginning. In...

Since the 2008 global financial crisis, and after decades of relative neglect, the importance of the financial system and its episodic crises as drivers of macroeconomic outcomes has attracted fresh scrutiny from academics, policy makers, and practitioners. Theoretical advances are following a...