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...

A major question in the literature on the classical gold standard concerns the efficiency of international arbitrage. Authors have examined efficiency by looking at the spread of the gold points, gold point violations, the flow of gold, or by tests of various asset market criteria, including...

This paper examines the relationship between openness, trade, and migration in the Asia-Pacific region during the post-1970 period. Conventional reduced-form empirical-growth specifications are augmented by an appeal to structural modelling, an extension that reveals a rich set of interactions...

A long literature since Feldstein and Horioka's seminal contribution documents the strong correlation of domestic saving and investment rates since the 1960s. According to conventional wisdom, the result provides evidence of international capital market imperfections. The macroeconomic theory of...

Recent research in international economic history has opened up new lines of enquiry on the origins of globalization, as well as its causes and consequences. Such findings have the potential to inform contemporary debates and this paper considers what lessons this body of historical work has for...

Standard neoclassical growth models rarely admits international factor mobility: convergence may result from factor accumulation in a closed economy, or from technology transfer. Conventional models are thus poorly equipped to explain the contribution of international factor flows to convergence...

This paper examines business cycles theoretically and empirically, with a quantitative study based on experience over the long run and in a cross section of countries. Several major questions in business cycle theory are explored. Theoretical concerns indicate that the properties of business...

The Argentine economy was transformed in the late nineteenth century by the mass migration of millions of Europeans. Various ideas have surfaced concerning the likely impact of this labor inflow: that it favored the wheat revolution on the pampas; that it promoted urbanization and the rapid...

This paper uses extensive micro-level data from Argentine agriculture circa 1880-1914 to explore various hypotheses relating to the supposed unusual and favored position enjoyed by the owner-operated large scale estates (latifundia) on the pampas as compared to small-scale units operated by cash...