Tariff Incidence in America's Gilded Age

Douglas Irwin

No 12162, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: In the late nineteenth century, the United States imposed high tariffs to protect domestic manufacturers from foreign competition. This paper examines the magnitude of protection given to import-competing producers and the costs imposed on export-oriented producers by focusing on changes in the domestic prices of traded goods relative to non-traded goods. Because the tariffs tended to increase the prices of non-traded goods, the degree of protection was much less than indicated by nominal rates of protection; the results here suggest that the 30 percent average tariff on imports yielded a 15 percent implicit subsidy to import-competing producers while effectively taxing exporters at a rate of 11 percent. The paper also finds that tariff policy redistributed large amounts of income (about 9 percent of GDP) across groups, although the impact on consumers was only slightly negative because they devoted a sizeable share of their expenditures to exportable goods. These findings may explain why import-competing producers pressed for even greater protection in the face of already high tariffs and why consumers (as voters) did not strongly oppose the policy.

JEL-codes: F1 N7 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his
Note: DAE ITI
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published as Irwin, Douglas A., 2007. "Tariff Incidence in America's Gilded Age," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 67(03), pages 582-607, September.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w12162.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Tariff Incidence in America's Gilded Age (2007)
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:12162

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w12162

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 ().