It is often assumed that Britain’s colonies followed the British doctrine of free trade in the second half of the nineteenth century. Malta, which became a British colony in 1814, did indeed become an early free trader. However, she failed to liberalize the grain trade, even when the mother...

Trade theorists have come to understand that their theory is ambiguous on the question : are trade and factor flows substitutes? While this sounds like an open invitation for empirical research, hardly any serious econometric work has appeared in the literature. This paper uses history to fill...

This paper documents the evolution of variables central to understanding the creation of an Atlantic Economy in wheat between the US and the UK in the nineteenth century. The cointegrated VAR model is then applied to the period 1838-1913 in order to find long-run relationships between these...

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 the...

I develop a model in which a firm can choose to donate a portion of its profits to the provision of a public good. Consumers value this public good and are willing to pay a price premium to a firm which makes such a donation. When this price premium is sufficiently large, the firm can raise its...

This study investigates the volatility connectedness between the Irish and Great Britain electricity markets and how it is driven by changes in energy policy, institutional structures and political ideologies. We assess various aspects of this volatility connectedness including static...

This study investigates the volatility connectedness between the Irish and Great Britain electricity markets and how it is driven by changes in energy policy, institutional structures and political ideologies. We assess various aspects of this volatility connectedness including static...

Are there productivity spillovers from FDI to domestic firms, and, if so, how much should host countries be willing to pay to attract FDI? To examine these questions we use a plant-level panel covering U.K. manufacturing from 1973 through 1992. Across a wide range of specifications, we estimate...