Did the great influenza of 1918-1920 trigger a reversal of the first era of globalization?

Pierre Siklos

CAMA Working Papers from Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University

Abstract: I revisit the 1918-20 pandemic and ask whether it led to a reversal in the rise of trade and financial globalization that preceded it. Using annual data for 17 countries for the 1870-1928 period, a variety of tests and techniques are used to draw some robust conclusions. Overall, the pandemic a century ago interrupted, but did not put an end, the first globalization of the 20th century. However, two blocs consisting of combatant and non-combatant countries, experienced significantly different consequences. Globalization was sharply curtailed for the combatant countries while there were few, if any, consequences for globalization in the non-combatant group of countries. That said, there was considerable resilience especially in trade openness among several of the combatant economies. Perhaps changes in the make-up of economic blocs, post-pandemic, is a fallout from shocks of this kind. While there are lessons for the ongoing COVID pandemics differences between the 1920s and today also play a role.

Keywords: Great Influenza 1918-20; globalization; openness; financial integration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F15 F36 N10 O57 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 43 pages
Date: 2021-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-int
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cama.crawford.anu.edu.au/sites/default/fil ... 95_2021_siklos_0.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Did the great influenza of 1918–1920 trigger a reversal of the first era of globalization?* (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:een:camaaa:2021-95

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CAMA Working Papers from Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Cama Admin ().