Commercial Imperialism? Political Influence and Trade during the Cold War

Daniel Berger, William Easterly, Nathan Nunn and Shanker Satyanath

Scholarly Articles from Harvard University Department of Economics

Abstract: We provide evidence that increased political influence, arising from CIA interventions during the Cold War, was used to create a larger foreign market for American products. Following CIA interventions, imports from the US increased dramatically, while total exports to the US were unaffected. The surge in imports was concentrated in industries in which the US had a comparative disadvantage, not a comparative advantage. Our analysis is able to rule out decreased trade costs, changing political ideology, and an increase in US loans and grants as alternative explanations. We provide evidence that the increased imports arose through direct purchases of American products by foreign governments.

Date: 2013
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-int and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (155)

Published in American Economic Review

Downloads: (external link)
http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/1198633 ... rical-imperalism.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Commercial Imperialism? Political Influence and Trade during the Cold War (2013)
Working Paper: Commercial Imperialism? Political Influence and Trade During the Cold War (2010)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hrv:faseco:11986334

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Scholarly Articles from Harvard University Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Office for Scholarly Communication ().