This paper examines the long-term economic impacts of the adoption of local knowledge during European colonisation. We use the case of Australia, where Aboriginal knowledge of the landscape was integral to colonial exploration and settlement. To quantify the effects of this knowledge, we...

In this paper, three steps are made. First, an effort is made to show a consequential effect of maritime insecurity on seafarers and marine professionals; they are at risk of a complicated string of processes that impact their lives. Second, there is the risk to the environment and property....

What caused the rise of ancient Greek city-states? To answer this question, I develop a model that synthesizes neo-institutionalist, neo-physiocrat, and neo-classical theories of development and advances a trade-based explanation consistent with the writing of classicists. Then, with a new...

This paper proposes a novel strategy for identifying the effects of import competition on economic outcomes that avoids standard concerns related to the endogeneity of trade policy and provides a consistent measure of exposure to trade over time. Conditioning on the level of import tariffs, our...

In the eighteenth century, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) traded sappanwood, a source of red dye for textiles, in both its Dutch-Asiatic and intra-Asian trade routes. The voyage and cargo records kept by the VOC's bookkeeper-general in Batavia reveal a small but convenient trade that...

This paper documents the size and timing of the world inter-continental trade boom following the great voyages in the 1490s of Columbus, da Gama and their followers. Indeed, a trade boom followed over the subsequent three centuries. But what was its cause? The conventional wisdom in the world...

American trade policy in the modern era has been rooted in a globalist ideology which has resulted in the loss of millions of jobs, the weakening of the fundamental strength of the economy, and has endangered national security. American became a great economic power due to the American System of...

Till the 16th century tea was herbal drink which was as only known to the People of China, Tibet, Magnolia, Thailand and Japan. But the European merchants introduced it to the global world and brought tremendous changes to its taste and flavour. Though the Asian leaf was quite unknown to England...

In the Middle Ages, tens of thousands of uni-faced bracteate coins were struck in the period 1140−1520. The existence of hundreds of small independent currency areas with their own mints in central, eastern and northern Europe and the strong link between bracteates and periodic re-coinage...

The United States came close to complete autarky in 1808 as a result of a self-imposed embargo on international shipping from December 1807 to March 1809. Monthly prices of exported and imported goods reveal the embargo's striking effect on commodity markets and allow a calculation of its...

There are two contrasting views of pre-19th century trade and globalization. First, there are the world history scholars like Andre Gunder Frank who attach globalization 'big bang' significance to the dates 1492 (Christopher Colombus stumbles on the Americas in search of spices) and 1498 (Vasco...

Some world historians attach globalization big bang' significance to 1492 (Christopher Colombus stumbles on the Americas in search of spices) and 1498 (Vasco da Gama makes an end run around Africa and snatches monopoly rents away from the Arab and Venetian spice traders). Such scholars are on...

As part of a process that has been at work since 1850, real wages among the current OECD countries converged during the late 19th century. The convergence was pronounced as that which we have seen in the post World War Il period. This paper uses computable general equilibrium models to isolate...

The Silk Roads were a decentralized network of trade routes that connected ancient cities across Eurasia. Goods, ideas, people, and technology moved along the roads for over 1,500 years. Using a detailed georeferenced map of the entire trade network, this paper finds that areas within 50 KM of...

Most countries in the periphery specialized in the export of just a handful of primary products for most of their history. Some of these commodities have been more volatile than others, and those with more volatile prices have grown slowly relative both to the industrial leaders and to other...

This paper uncovers a fact that has not been well appreciated: tariffs in Latin America were far higher than anywhere else in the century before the Great Depression. This is a surprising fact given that this region has been said to have exploited globalization forces better than most during the...

Alexander Hamilton's Report on Manufactures (1791) is a classic document in the history of U.S. economic policy, but its fate in Congress is not well known. It is commonly believed that the report was never implemented. Although Hamilton's proposals for bounties (subsidies) failed to receive...

This paper describes broad regional and temporal trends in the evolution of international trade and international factor flows between 1700 and 1870, including key differences in trade costs across space and time. We find trade links in Western Europe and the European colonies of North America...

This paper reviews changes in global, between-country and within-country inequality over 1980-2000 against the background of the shifts that occurred in this area during the globalisation of 1870-1914. The paper finds that recent changes in global and between-country inequality are not marked...

The belief that immigrants generate beneficial externalities in their host countries, specifically in the form of an increased opportunity and ability of firms to expand their foreign trade, has recently been challenged by George Borjas in Heaven's Door (1999, p. 97) as having no empirical...

With a per capita GDP estimated to be 20% higher than that of Great Britain, Song dynasty China (c. 960-1268) experienced a remarkable Commercial Revolution. We trace its origin to a tax reform forced upon the emperor by an exogenous war shock (the An-shi Rebellion of 755-763) during the...

Measured by the ratio of trade to output, the period 1870 1913 marked the birth of the first era of trade globalization and the period 1914 39 its death. What caused the boom and bust? We use an augmented gravity model to examine the gold standard, tariffs, and transport costs as determinants of...

Introduction. During the years of Ukrainian independence, China has risen from a relatively insignificant country in Asia to the biggest trade partner of Ukraine surpassing even Russia and other post-Soviet republics both in amount and the importance of bilateral trade. To fully understand the...

This paper augments the new historical literature on factor price convergence. The focus is on the late nineteenth century, when economic convergence among the current OECD countries was dramatic; and the focus is on the convergence between Old World and New, by far the biggest participants in...

Economists draw important lessons for modern development from the medieval Maghribi traders who, according to Greif, enforced contracts multilaterally through a closed, private-order 'coalition'. We show that this view is untenable. The Maghribis used formal legal mechanisms and entered business...

A large literature on "border effects" in the wake of McCallum (1995) documents the massive impact of borders on trade. However, all these studies suffer from an identification problem. "Border effects" are usually identified from cross-sectional variation alone. We do not know how trade would...

"This collection takes a multi-perspective approach in the study of empire and commodities beyond temporal and spatial boundaries. From early modern Venetian trade to tea in the Eurasian world, the role of gold in Portuguese imperial ambitions and British sailors as traders, Across Colonial...

"A history of the East India Company told through experiences of everyday life on the ocean: maritime travel, shipboard conditions, foreign encounters, islands and ports of call, the waters of the Atlantic itself. McAleer portrays these as essential to the understanding of the Company as an...