Trade Costs in the First Wave of Globalization

David Jacks, Christopher Meissner and Dennis Novy

No 12602, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: What drives globalization today and in the past? We employ a new micro-founded measure of bilateral trade costs based on a standard model of trade in differentiated goods to address this question. These trade costs gauge the difference between observed bilateral trade and frictionless trade. They comprise tariffs, transportation costs and all other factors that impede international trade but which are inherently difficult to observe. Trade costs fell on average by ten to fifteen percent between 1870 and 1913. We also use this measure to decompose the growth of global trade over that period and find that roughly 44 percent of the global trade boom can be explained by reductions in trade costs; the remaining 56 percent is attributable to economic expansion.

JEL-codes: F15 N70 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-int and nep-pol
Note: DAE
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (29)

Published as David Jacks, Christopher M. Meissner and Dennis Novy, “Trade Costs in the First Wave of Globalization” (2010) Explorations in Economic History vol. 47 (2) pp. 127-141.

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