Defying Gravity: The 1932 Imperial Economic Conference and the Reorientation of Canadian Trade

David Jacks

No 17242, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: In the wake of the Great Depression, the Canadian government embarked on a stunning reversal in its commercial policy. A key element of its response was the promotion of intra-imperial trade at the Imperial Economic Conference of 1932. This paper addresses whether or not Canadian trade was able to defy gravity and divert trade flows towards other signatories at Ottawa. The results strongly suggest that the conference was a failure from the Canadian perspective. Potential sources of this failure include unreasonable expectations about the likely reductions in trade costs and a neglect of key considerations related to certainty and credibility.

JEL-codes: F1 N7 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-hpe
Note: DAE
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published as Explorations in Economic History Volume 53, July 2014, Pages 19–39 Cover image Defying gravity: The Imperial Economic Conference and the reorientation of Canadian trade ☆ David S. Jacks

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w17242.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:nbr:nberwo:17242

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w17242

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().