Deliberate Surrender? The Impact of Interwar Indian Protection

Kevin O'Rourke, Vellore Arthi, Markus Lampe and Ashwin Nair

No 14775, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: What is the role of trade policy in promoting intra-Empire trade? We address the question in the context of interwar India, whose trade policies have been accused of harming British export interests. We quantify the impact of trade policy on the value and composition of Indian imports, using novel disaggregated data on both trade policies and imports for 114 commodity categories coming from 42 countries. We find that even though Indian protection lowered total imports, it substantially boosted imports from the UK. Despite the rising tariff barriers facing British ex- porters, trade diversion from other countries ensured that Indian trade policy benefited them overall.

Keywords: Trade policy; Trade elasticities; India; Interwar period (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F13 F14 N75 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-int
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Deliberate Surrender? The Impact of Interwar Indian Protection (2024)
Journal Article: Deliberate Surrender? The Impact of Interwar Indian Protection (2023)
Working Paper: Deliberate Surrender? The Impact of Interwar Indian Protection (2020)
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