Rise and Fall of Empires in the Industrial Era: A Story of Shifting Comparative Advantages

Roberto Bonfatti and Kerem Cosar

No 17482, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: The last two centuries witnessed the rise and fall of empires. We construct a model which rationalises this in terms of the changing trade gains from empires. In the model, empires are arrangements that reduce trade cost between an industrial metropole and the agricultural periphery. During early industrialisation, the value of such bilateral trade increases, and so does the value of empires. As industrialisation diffuses, and as manufactures become more differentiated, trade becomes more multilateral and intra-industry, reducing the value of empires. Our results are consistent with long-term changes in income distribution and trade patterns, and with previous historical arguments.

Keywords: International trade; Empires; Comparative advantage; Optimal country size (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F1 F5 N7 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-07
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP17482 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Working Paper: Rise and Fall of Empires in the Industrial Era: A Story of Shifting Comparative Advantages (2022)
Working Paper: Rise and fall of empires in the industrial era: A story of shifting comparative advantages (2022)
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:cpr:ceprdp:17482

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP17482

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().