Did Tariffs Make American Manufacturing Great? New Evidence from the Gilded Age
Alexander Klein and
Christopher Meissner
No 33100, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc
Abstract:
We study the relationship between tariffs and labor productivity in US manufacturing between 1870 and 1909. Using highly dis-aggregated tariff data, state-industry data for the manufacturing sector, and an instrumental variable strategy, results show that tariffs reduced labor productivity. Tariffs also generally reduced the average size of establishments within an industry but raised output prices, value-added, gross output, employment, and the number of establishments. We also find evidence of heterogeneity in the association between tariffs and value added, gross output, employment, and establishments across groups of industries. We conclude that tariffs may have reduced labor productivity in manufacturing by weakening import competition and by inducing entry of smaller, less productive domestic firms. Our research also reveals that lobbying by powerful and productive industries may have been at play. The era’s high tariffs are unlikely to have helped the US become a globally competitive manufacturer.
JEL-codes: F13 F15 N11 O14 O47 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eff, nep-his and nep-int
Note: DAE ITI
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w33100.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.
Related works:
Working Paper: Did Tariffs Make American Manufacturing Great? New Evidence from the Gilded Age (2024)
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:33100
Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w33100
The price is Paper copy available by mail.
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 (wpc@nber.org).