Despite the world-wide spread of economic blocs following the Great Depression, Japan sought to find trade partners outside of its own bloc and to maintain a relationship with some foreign blocs, in particular maintaining a connection with the British Commonwealth and the Sterling bloc. The...

This paper provides a new, uni¯ed, and °exible framework to measure and characterize convergence in prices. We formally de¯ne this notion and propose a model to represent a wide range of transition paths that converge to a common steady-state. Our framework enables the econometric measurement...

This paper analyzes the role of institutions in price dispersion among cities in the European region in the 1996–2009 period. An overview of the literature on the border effect reveals that the role of institutions is completely neglected. Using the Worldwide Governance Indicators as...

To what extent do national borders and national currencies impose costs that segment markets across countries? To answer this question we use a dataset with product level retail prices and wholesale costs for a large grocery chain with stores in the U.S. and Canada. We develop a model of pricing...

This paper analyzes the role of institutions in price dispersion among cities in the European region in the 1996-2009 period. An overview of the literature on the border effect reveals that the role of institutions is completely neglected. Using the Worldwide Governance Indicators as explanatory...

Do international trade and finance flow together? In theory, trade and finance can be substitutes or complements, so the matter must be resolved empirically. We study trade and financial flows from the United Kingdom from 1870 to 1913 and the United States in the interwar years. Trade and...

Conventional wisdom in economic history suggests that conflict between countries can be enormously disruptive of economic activity, especially international trade. Yet nothing is known empirically about these effects in large samples. We study the effects of war on bilateral trade for almost all...

Empirical research on the gravity model of international trade in the wake of Rose (2000) affirms that currency union formation doubles or triples trade. Currency unions could, however, also be established precisely because trade among their members was already high. In OLS estimation, this...

Between the 1880s and 1930s the international wool auction market shifted decisively from Britain to Australia. A series of historical developments altered the efficiency criteria for the existing institutional arrangements, notably the growing international dominance of Australian wool...

Does democracy encourage free trade? It depends. Broadening the franchise involves transferring power from non-elected elites to the wider population, most of whom will be workers. The Hecksher-Ohlin-Stolper-Samuelson logic says that democratization should lead to more liberal trade policies in...