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Energy metrics is the development of a whole new theoretical framework for the conception and measurement of energy and economic performances, energy efficiency and productivity improvements with important political economy implications consistent with the best use of all natural and economic resources. The purpose of this research is to present some vital energy indicators based on magnitude and scale of energy weakness, GDP per barrel that is an indicator of energy productivity and barrels per capita that is an indicator of energy efficiency. Energy metrics can support policy maker to monitor energy system of countries in order to design effective strategy and political economy focused to increase the competitive advantage of countries in modern economies.

Este artículo tiene como principal objetivo contabilizar la presencia del capital británico en el desarrollo de los ferrocarriles españoles de vía ancha. Aunque es ampliamente conocido el papel abrumador que jugaron los capitales franceses en la expansión ferroviaria en España, algunos intereses británicos no fueron del todo ajenos a dicho proceso. No se limitaron a su aportación habitual de material ferroviario y tras las frustradas tentativas iniciales, cubiertas de ciertos aspectos legendarios como la presencia de Stephenson en España en 1845, los capitales británicos concentraron su interés en el segundo impulso ferroviario español que arranca en 1880 con la puesta en marcha de líneas ferroviarias de vía ancha con una clara vocación minera. A partir de la valiosa documentación de archivos británicos -Public Record Office- y españoles -Archivo Histórico Ferroviario- se reconstruye la estructura del capital de estas empresas, se analiza su evolución y se estudian las figuras de los grandes, medianos y pequeños accionistas en estas sociedades. Finalmente, se hace un balance del desenlace de estos negocios.

As the first to use an archival data set on historical land values of Berlin, Germany, from 1890 to 1936, we exploit exogenous variation in transport technology in order to test the validity of the monocentric city model. Endogenously determining the CBD, we conduct cross-section and time-difference analysis and model the land gradient in terms of straight-line distance and travel times. A counterfactual scenario indicates that a large proportion of urban decentralization is attributable to improvements in transport infrastructure. Controlling for spatial dependency, results suggest that the monocentric model fitted the city structure until the mid 20th century.

We assemble a dataset on technology adoption in 1000 BC, 0 AD, and 1500 AD for the predecessors to today's nation states. We find that this very old history of technology adoption is surprisingly significant for today's national development outcomes. Our strong and robust results are for 1500 AD determining per capita income today. We find technological persistence across long epochs: from 1000 BC to 0 AD, from 0 AD to 1500 AD, and from 1500 AD to the present. Although the data allow only some suggestive tests of rival hypotheses to explain long?run technological persistence, we find the evidence to be most consistent with a model of endogenous technology adoption where the cost of adopting new technologies declines sufficiently with the current level of adoption. The evidence is less consistent with a dominant role for population as predicted by the semi?endogenous growth models or for country-level factors like culture, genes or institutions.

Economic historians of the eighteenth-century British mainland North American colonies have given considerable weight to the role of exports as a stimulus for economic growth. Yet their analyses have been handicapped by reliance on one or two time series to serve as indicators of broader changes rather than considering the export sector as a whole. Here we present new comprehensive export measures for the middle colonies. We find that aggregate exports in constant prices grew very quickly, but barely faster than population during the period under consideration. Furthermore, improvements in the terms of trade increased the colonists' ability to buy imports over time, especially after 1740. Although the export sector performed well, it constituted a relatively small part of the region's economy. It is uncertain if this export success was sufficient to propel the entire economy at a rate that exceeded the growth of population.

This paper provides evidence that transatlantic commodity market integration began prior to the “first era of globalization” at the end of the nineteenth century. It does so by giving a long term perspective to the story of the development of an Atlantic Economy in wheat between the United States and Britain. Both trade statistics and contemporary comment reveal the importance of this trade from the middle to late eighteenth century, long before the so-called grain invasion of the late nineteenth century. Using data on imports from America and a large volume of substantiating primary evidence, specific periods are identified when market integration might have been possible. Using price data for wheat in America and Britain, some evidence is found that markets were integrated, but this process was continuously being interrupted by “exogenous” events, such as trade policy, war and politics. Transportation costs cannot be seen to be the driving force behind periods of increased trade, which are more attributable to the absence of these exogenous events.

Brazil, Mexico and a few other Latin American republics enjoyed faster industrialization after 1870 than did the rest of Latin America and even faster than the rest of the poor periphery (except East Asia). How much of this economic performance was due to more accommodating institutions and greater political stability, changes that would have facilitated greater technology transfer and accumulation? That is, how much to changing fundamentals? How much instead to a cessation in the secular rise in the net barter terms of trade which reversed de-industrialization forces, thus favoring manufacturing? How much instead to cheaper foodstuffs coming from more open commercial policies ('grain invasions'), and from railroad-induced integration of domestic grain markets, serving to keep urban grain prices and thus nominal wages in industry low, helping to maintain competitiveness? How much instead to more pro-industrial real exchange rate and tariff policy? Which of these forces contributed most to industrialization among the Latin American leaders, long before their mid 20th century adoption of ISI policies? Changing fundamentals, changing market conditions, or changing policies?

Tourism today is an activity of substantial economic importance worldwide, and has been for some time. Tourism is also of substantial economic importance in the United States, sufficient to warrant the Bureau of Economic Analysis's establishing special accounts on travel and tourism. In this paper we investigate the long term rise in overseas travel by Americans. Over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the number of Americans going abroad rose from less than 2,000 travelers to over 26 million. The industry went from one confined to the elite of American society to what some have described as mass tourism. We document this rise by compiling a long term series on overseas travel, and describe the changes in the composition of the travelers, their destinations, and their mode of travel. We use an Error Correction Model to explain how the increase came about.

In this paper, I present an attempt to generalize the results of a historical case-study on the foundation of St. Petersburg and its influence on Dutch maritime shipping in the Gulf of Finland and Archangel in 1703-1740. In order to do so, I present the case itself first, followed by a description of the methods applied to its study and a detailed overview of the analytical results. The interplay of local and regional economic policies, infrastructural developments and the location of industries plays a major role in the organization of maritime shipping destined to the places and regions that were affected by it. The actual effect on the organization of maritime shipping, however, can be rather unexpected. The results of this case-study show that the impact of a new port on the organization of maritime shipping is anything but straightforward. The reason for this is that maritime shipping is an economic activity in its own right: maritime shipping is defined not only by the nodes it connects nor by its own social structures exclusively, but by both elements at the same time. In adopting organizational strategies varying from flexibility to repetitiveness in the choice of both cargoes and routes, maritime shipping is bounded by the origin of the shipmaster, the size of his ship and the type of cargo that he was specialized in. Thus, in order to understand the impact of a new port on the organization of maritime shipping it is necessary to take into account both the interplay of economic geographical circumstances and the complex organizational structure of maritime shipping. Three types of generalization are possible on the basis of the results of this case-study. From a historiographical point of view, the analytical results of this paper serve as an answer to existing assumptions about specialization in early-modern maritime shipping. On a methodological level, it is possible to generalize the resuls of this case-study in the form of a taxonomy of organizational strategies and behaviour of populations of shipmasters. This, in turn, is proof of the successful application of evolutionary theory to a profoundly economic historical topic.

This paper documents the evolution of variables central to understanding the creation of an Atlantic Economy in wheat between the US and the UK in the nineteenth century. The cointegrated VAR model is then applied to the period 1838-1913 in order to find long-run relationships between these variables. The main result is that explanations for the expansion of trade based on falling barriers to trade need to be augmented by another factor: the expansion of US supply. This implies that the growth of the Atlantic Economy cannot wholly be attributed to the decline in transportation costs, as is usually considered to be the case.

W. Arthur Lewis argued that a new international economic order emerged between 1870 and 1913, and that global terms of trade forces produced rising primary product specialization and de-industrialization in the poor periphery. More recently, modern economists argue that volatility reduces growth in the poor periphery. This paper assess these de-industrialization and volatility forces between 1782 and 1913 during the Great Divergence. First, it argues that the new economic order had been firmly established by 1870, and that the transition took place in the century before, not after. Second, based on econometric evidence from 1870-1939, we know that while a terms of trade improvement raised long run growth in the rich core, it did not do so in the poor periphery. Given that the secular terms of trade boom in the poor periphery was much bigger over the century before 1870 than after, it seems plausible to infer that it might help explain the great 19th century divergence between core and periphery. Third, the boom and its de-industrialization impact was only part of the story; growth-reducing terms of trade volatility was the other. Between 1820 and 1870, terms of trade volatility was much greater in the poor periphery than the core. It was still very big after 1870, certainly far bigger than in the core. Based on econometric evidence from 1870-2000, we know that terms of trade volatility lowers long run growth in the poor periphery, and that the negative impact is big. Given that terms of trade volatility in the poor periphery was even bigger during the century before 1870, it seems plausible to infer that it also helps explain the great 19th century divergence between core and periphery.

A stakeholder survey was conducted in Ghana to assess the level of public perceptions and acceptance of agricultural biotechnologies. A total of 100 respondents drawn from academia, Non-governmental organizations, business community, government and other stakeholders were interviewed on their views on self-protection attitudes, health and economic benefits, skepticism and optimism about agricultural biotechnologies as well as the level of confidence in existing government regulatory systems to protect society against any negative effects of biotechnological issues. Although half of the sample interviewed did not accept biotechnologies in general and GM foods in particular, there was rather high approval of some specific health and economic benefits. About 80 percent of the sample interviewed lack confidence in existing government regulatory systems probably due to inadequate capacity. Upgrading of the existing regulatory system with adequate capacity to regulate the ethical and moral issues associated with biotechnologies and GM foods was recommended

This paper reviews the status of Agricultural Biotechnology in Sub-Saharan Africa. It addresses the potential economic benefits to Sub-Saharan Africa and the effect biotechnology policies may have on growth, production and poverty reduction. The extent to which agricultural biotechnology will compound or mitigate the constraints faced by smallholders/subsistence farmers is also discussed. The status of crop biotechnology research worldwide is reviewed and the influence of intellectual property rights (IPRs) and market concentration on the development and diffusion of biotechnology in Sub-Saharan Africa is analyzed. The paper also explores the potential of public-private partnerships and recommends policy measures and investments that could focus more biotechnology research on the problems of the poor and alleviate some of the concerns about the impacts of biotechnology.

The endogenous growth literature has explored the transition from a Malthusian world where real wages, living standards and labor productivity are all linked to factor endowments, to one where (endogenous) productivity change embedded in modern industrial growth breaks that link. Recently, economic historians have presented evidence from England showing that the dramatic reversal in distributional trends -- from a steep secular fall in wage-land rent ratios before 1800 to a steep secular rise thereafter -- must be explained both by industrial revolutionary growth forces and by global forces that opened up the English economy to international trade. This paper explores whether and how the relationship was different for Spain, a country which had relatively poor productivity growth in agriculture and low living standards prior to 1800, was a late-comer to industrialization afterwards, and adopted very restrictive policies towards imports for much of the 19th century. The failure of Spanish wage-rental ratios to undergo a sustained rise after 1840 can be attributed to the delayed fall in relative agricultural prices (due to those protective policies) and to the decline in Spanish manufacturing productivity after 1898.

The paper studies how the risks specific to a nuclear power investment in liberalised markets – regulatory, construction, operation and market risks – can be mitigated or transferred away from the plant investor through different contractual and organisational arrangements. It argues that at least for the first new reactors significant risk transfers onto governments, consumers, and, vendors are likely to be needed to make nuclear power attractive to investors in liberalised markets. These different types of risk allocations will in turn induce different investment financing choices. Four case studies of recent new nuclear projects illustrate the alternative consistent combinations of contractual, organization, and financial arrangements for new nuclear build depending on the industrial organisation, the market position of the company and the institutional environment prevailing in different countries. The most likely financing structure will likely be based on corporate financing or some form of hybrid arrangement backed by the balance sheet of one or a consortium of large vertically integrated companies.

This paper analyses the major changes in textile products, production costs, prices, and market orientations during the era when the �draperies� or cloth industries of the late-medieval Low Countries and England had become increasingly dependent upon northern markets and the German Hanseatic League as the major vehicle in marketing their textiles. In several previous articles, I had examined the major factors that had led to the industrial and commercial reorientations of the these cloth industries during the 14th and 15th centuries. In brief, the spreading stain of widespread warfare, piracy, and general insecurity, especially in the Mediterranean basin, from the 1290s (to the 1460s), led to a rise in transport and transaction costs that, in turn, had three major consequences for the Low Countries� and England�s textile-based economies: (1) to cripple the export-oriented production of the very cheap and light fabrics, most of which had been sent to Mediterranean markets and had comprised the bulk of northern textile shipments to this region; (2) to encourage most draperies in the Low Countries and England to re-orient their export-oriented cloth production more and more towards high-priced ultra-luxury quality woollens, woven almost exclusively from the finer English wools, but wools that came to be burdened with high export taxes; and (3) to force these northern cloth industries, facing increasing difficulties in Mediterranean commerce, to become far more dependent on Hanseatic merchants and German towns for their cloth sales, certainly by the mid-14th century. But in effecting these industrial and commercial orientations, the Low Countries� draperies encountered a new and even more dangerous challenge from expanding English competition in textiles, which enjoyed the signal advantage of control over high quality wools, which, for the domestic cloth industry, were tax-free and much cheaper. Nevertheless, for reasons outlined in this and earlier papers, the English took well more than a century to achieve final victory in the woollen broadcloth trade, though one that came to be fundamentally based upon German commercial forces, along with other commercial, monetary, and industrial factors outlined in this paper. Obeying the law of comparative advantage, the textile industries of the Low Countries responded to this English victory by once more re-orienting production to cheaper cloths, especially cheap, light worsted-says; but they were able to do so only when structural changes in European markets and trading networks, with falling transaction costs, from the later 15th century, once more favoured the export-oriented production of such cheap textiles. The major contributions of this paper, however, also lie in analysing production, product, cost, and prices changes in textiles, both cheap worsted and luxury woollens, in terms of 15 tables: (1) English wool and broadcloth exports, 1281-1550; (2) Production indices for the woollen cloth industries of the southern Low Countries, 1316-1575; (3) Production indices for the Hondschoote sayetterie and Leiden woollen industry, 1376-1570; (4 - 7) Prices and relative values of Ghent woollens: in terms of values of commodity baskets and a mason�s daily wage: 1331-1570 (no. of days� wages to buy one cloth); (8) Prices of English woollen cloths at Cambridge and Winchester: and values in terms of a mason�s daily wage; and mean values of English cloth exports in pounds sterling, groot Flemish, and florins; (9) Prices of various Flemish woollen broadcloths, compared to the Flemish composite price index: 1351-1550; (10) Prices of various Brabantine woollen cloths, compared to the Brabant composite price index; and the no. of days� wages for a master mason to buy one Mechelen broadcloth, 1351-1520; (11) Prices of Hondschoote Says and Ghent Dickedinnen Woollens, in pounds groot Flemish, compared with the purchasing power an Antwerp master mason's daily wages; (12) Purchase prices of Ghent woollens: by rank order of values, 1360-69: in pounds groot Flemish, units of Commodity Baskets of equivalent value, and the number of a master mason�s day�s wages required to purchase each cloth (from the cheapest to highest priced); (13) Dimensions, composition, and weights of selected Flemish and English textiles, 1456-1579; (14) Prices of and taxes on exported English wools (sacks), 1211-1500: (15) Prices of English Wools (48 grades) sold at the Calais Staple, in 1475 and 1499.

It is well known that day-ahead prices in power markets exhibit spikes and time-varying volatility. Spikes and extremely high volatility are the results of (short-term) frictions in demand and/or supply conditions. It is known that information on load or the reserve margin help to forecast spikes. However, these variables are not (timely) available for every market participant and this paper suggests to use temperature as a proxy. Interpreting the results from several switching-regimes models, the paper shows that the probability of spike occurrence increases when temperature deviates substantially from mean temperature levels.

As current trends of Chinese economic growth and motorization continue, its demand for higher efficiency fuels (oil, gas, and electric power) will increase. This, coupled with China’s limited domestic production, can translate into a massive demand for energy imports. To predict China’s energy demand into 2020, an econometric model of the Chinese energy economy is constructed based on its energy balance. This paper suggests that China’s increase demand for energy imports will be most sensitive to increases in motorization rather than economic growth. It can be partially offset by increasing domestic energy production or energy efficiency.

Este texto realiza un recorrido en el largo plazo sobre la trayectoria del ferrocarril en España, analizando aquellas cuestiones que han constituido la base del debate historiográfico, especialmente las referidas a las relaciones económicas, empresariales y territoriales, sin olvidar el papel que ha jugado el Estado como regulador y actor principal de la política ferroviara. Estructurado por capítulos que siguen una lógica temporal y temática se estudian y sintetizan las siguientes cuestiones. En primer lugar, se analiza el arranque del ferrocarril en España en el que se desgranan los aspectos más relevantes sobre los condicionantes del atraso del ferrocarril en España y los debates sobre el ancho de vía y la radialidad de la red.A continuación, el estudio de los ritmos de construcción de la red ferroviaria en España y a los principales argumentos que relacionan al ferrocarril con la economía, en lo que los especialistas han dado en llamar efectos de arrastre hacía atrás y hacia delante.En el siguiente apartado, se hace un balance de la trayectoria de las principales empresas ferroviarias españolas, grandes y medianas, caracterizadas por la fuerte aportación de capital extranjero y la tendencia a la concentración como modo de optimización de la explotación. Este apartado nos abre camino al epígrafe 5 en el que se analiza un momento clave de historia ferroviaria en nuestro país que se conoció como “problema ferroviario” que llevaría a la progresiva intervención del Estado ante la crisis sin retorno que experimentaban las compañías. El estudio de la etapa pública constituye el eje central del epígrafe 6 en el que se constata el paso del periodo anterior de hegemonía en el sistema de transportes terrestres a una situación de marginalidad que fue especialmente aguda en el caso español. El capítulo 7 abarca todo el periodo democrático donde se consolida el ferrocarril como un servicio público garantizado por el Estado y en el que se produce el cambio de ciclo hasta la coyuntura actual de liberalización del transporte ferroviario emanado de las directivas europeas sobre esta materia que buscan una actuación conjunta en todos los países de la Unión Europea. Unas breves conclusiones ponen epílogo a este trabajo.

The reduction of the use of biofuels is one of the main world-wide concerns, mainly had to the global heating. In this scene Brazil is one of the main combustible alcohol producer in the world, withholds the production technology commercialization and uses the alcohol on a large scale has more then two decades, on the other hand the country still presents serious problems in its income distributive structure. The present work uses the combination of surveys: the research of familiar budgets (POF), national research for sample of domiciles (PNAD) and Input-Output matrices, estimating the impact of this growth on the distribution of Brazilian income. The joined results show, confirming other works, that the impact on the income distribution is very small. Regionally, the biggest reduction appears in the regions North and Northeast.

The Brazilian integration strategy has been focused on agreements based upon North-South and South-South negotiations. However, this kind of negotiations face serious troubles to be done. Consequently, the option of the internal economic integration might be more viable in terms of social welfare gains and promotion of regional equity. To do this, an spatial applied general equilibrium model was elaborated for analyzing economic integration policies in the country. This model incorporates explicitly transport cost as a trade barrier. The model is specified for five Brazilian macro-regions and five external regions (Nafta, Asia, European Union, Alcsa and rest of the World). Several economic integration options were simulated in order to analyze what are the best ones for the country and for Nordeste, appraised in terms of economic efficiency and regional equity.

This paper estimates the effect of trade liberalisation on import performance of selected Latin American countries. The novelty of this study is that it applies a long-term approach covering the whole XX century using times series and panel data analyses. The empirical exercise shows that the relationship between tariffs and import growth in Latin America cannot be taken for granted - as it often happens – and anyway that it is not always quantitatively substantial. In particular, our analysis shows the existence of a long run relationship between tariffs and imports only from the second half of the XX century. It follows that trade liberalisation appears effective in fostering Latin America's trade growth only when integrated within a wider process, implying a multilateral and negotiated approach to trade policy. In this sense, multilateral and regional agreements (e.g. Mercosur) appear to have played a key role not only through tariff reduction but remarkably thanks to the creation of a rule-based system governing global trade relations. This result would confirm the thesis of those who endorse the existence of a formalized trading system to guarantee tariff liberalization and foster trade growth.

This study of the Italian wool-based textile industries (woollens, worsteds, and serges) seeks to examine its rise, expansion, and ultimate decline, over a period of five centuries (from ca. 1200 to ca. 1730) in the context of both international competition and economic conjoncture, in the context of the major macro-economic and demographic changes that the European economy experienced during these five centuries. The story commences during the so-called 'Commercial Revolution' era of the thirteenth-century when the Franco-Flemish cloth industries of north-west European dominated the international markets in a very wide range of these textiles, even in the Mediterranean basin. From the 1290s, and then into the better know period of the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453) the European economy suffered from the ravages of ever more widespread and debilitating warfare, throughout the Mediterranean basin and western Europe, and then from various factors, including plagues, that led to serious depopulation. The consequences led to a severe rise in transportation and transaction costs that gravely undermined the profitability of long-distance trade in cheaper textiles. That, in turn forced most textile manufacturers dependent on long-distance trade, and especially those who had operated as price-takers, to re-orient their export-based production to far higher priced, indeed luxury textiles, which could better sustain the burden of rising transactions costs, especially in acting as 'price-makers' engaged in monopolistic competition. That industrial-commercial transformation can be seen in the textile industries of northern France, the Low Countries, and England; but also those in Catalonia and above all in Italy: principally Tuscany and Lombardy. In so far as warfare and rising transaction costs limited the importation of even luxury textiles from north-west Europe, the Italian cloth industries thereby gained a far larger share of Mediterranean markets. This study focuses in particular on the ensuring history of the Florentine woollen cloth industry in the later Middle Ages. One price that all of these luxury-oriented cloth industries had to pay was steeply rising tax burdens on exported English wools; for the prime determinant of luxury quality in these textiles was the use of the finer grade English wools, the best in the world, until the development (through breeding and management) of Spanish merino wools, which finally succeeded in rivalling and then surpassing the English by the later sixteenth century. By the sixteenth century, with a reduction in European warfare and with renewed population growth, substantial economic growth, and significant innovations in transportation, transactions costs fell, and fell enough to make long-distance trade in cheaper textiles once more profitable; and that is reflected in product changes in the Florentine textile industry, which increasingly used Spanish merino wools in place of the English. But the most important events in the history of the Italian textile industries was the sudden rise of the Venetian cloth industry from the early to mid-sixteenth century, reaching a peak in the early seventeenth century, and then experiencing an equally rapid decline, in the famous of English textile competition, by the agency of the new Levant Company, which gained major advantages over the Italians in the large Ottoman Empire. The study concludes by examining the nature of those English advantages, which lay far more in the commercial (and transportation sphere) than in the industrial sphere, in terms of both traditional heavy weight woollens (made from Spanish wools) and the lighter, coarser, and cheaper fabrics of the English New Draperies (benefiting from a transformation in English wool production, from the Tudor-Stuart Enclosures). In sum: a study of comparative advantage in five centuries of international trade, in wool-based textiles, in terms of transaction costs, inputs (wools), and commercial organization.

Over many millennia, mankind has laboured to consume and satisfy three very necessary material wants or needs: food (including drink), shelter, and clothing. Each of these, however, has also been a major object of luxury consumption in most European societies. Textiles were necessities in providing almost all people with protection from the elements: from winter and evening cold, from summer heat, and from precipitation (rain, sleet, snow, hale); and also protection, in terms of modesty, from public shame and humiliation. For many people, however, clothing has also served and still serves other or supplementary wants, in terms of luxury consumption: for decoration, the assertion of personal values, and also for assertions or symbols of social status. The subject of this particular study, woollen textiles, is arguably the one that best permits a statistical comparison of market values of both luxury and ‘every-day’ textiles, because of the abundance and continuity of price data that have survived in two economically linked regions, the southern Low Countries and England, over two centuries: from the mid-fourteenth to the mid-sixteenth centuries. Luxury- quality textiles from this region played a very major role in European international trade during this long period, for reasons also examined in this study. The core of this study is a comparison of the prices and relative values of the purchases of two luxury woollen textiles and of two relatively cheap textiles in Ghent, Mechelen, and Antwerp in the years 1538 to 1544: the first category consists of the Ghent dickedinnen and the Mechelen zwart rooslaken broadcloths; the second (latter) consists of single and double says from Hondschoote, sold on the Antwerp market. The prices are given in the Flemish pond groot (live gros). But such prices are meaningless unless proper relative comparisons be made, to indicate the ‘real’ values of these textiles. This study utilizes two such techniques: (1) an estimate of the number of days’ wages that an Antwerp master mason would have required to buy one of these textiles (or 12 square metres of each); (2) the number of ‘baskets of consumables’, the measure used to construct the annual Consumer Price Index, whose aggregate value in pounds groot equalled the value of one of each of these textiles. The differences in relative values for these years are most vividly revealed by the first technique: For 1538-44, the average number of days’ wages required to purchase 12 square metres of cloth (enough to make up a man’s full suit of clothing) would have been: 13.725 days for a Hondschoote single say; 16.958 days for a Hondschoote double say; and 5.4 times as many days, 91.413 for a Ghent dickedinnen and 74.144 days for a Mechelen rooslaken. To make that comparison all the more clear – the differences between a heavy-weight luxury woollen broadcloth and a lighter-weight semi-worsted fabric (says) used for every-day wear, the next section analyses the physical composition of these various textiles, from the weavers’ guild ordinances: in terms of the wools used, the dimensions on the loom, the final dimensions after finishing, the weight of the cloths, and their gram weights per square metre. A snap-shot comparison of these textile values for just these few years, near the mid-sixteenth century, will not prove convincing, however, unless the ‘real’ values of these and other woollen textiles can be presented over much longer periods of time. The following tables presents the values of woollen broadcloths from Ghent, Mechelen, Bruges, Ypres (Ieper), Leuven, and England, for various periods from the 1330s to the 1570s – more than two and half centuries. Those values are again presented in four forms: (1) in Flemish pounds (£) groot; (2) In terms of nominal and ‘real’ price-indexes (base 1451-75=100); (3) the number of days’ wages that a Flemish (Bruges-Ghent), or English (Oxford-Cambridge), or Brabantine (Antwerp) master mason would have had to spend to purchase just one of each of these woollen cloths; and (4) the number of annual ‘baskets of consumables’ (Flemish, Brabantine, English) whose aggregate money-of-account value equalled the value of just one of these textiles. Of all the woollen textiles produced in medieval Europe by far the most luxurious, rivalling silks in value, were the scarlets, whose nature, composition, dyestuffs, finishing costs, and market values are considered – in the same fashion – for Mechelen from 1361 to 1415 (the only period of continuous data available). Finally, tables (14 and 15) are presented on the prices of the finer English wools used in manufacturing all these fine woollens.

Throughout U.S. history, import tariffs have been put on a sustained downward path in only two instances: from the early-1830s until the Civil War and from the mid-1930s to the present. This paper analyzes how the movement toward higher tariffs in the 1820s was reversed for the rest of the antebellum period. Tariff politics in Congress during this period was highly sectional: the North supported high tariffs, the South favored low tariffs, and the West was a %u201Cswing%u201D region. In the 1820s, a coalition between the North and West raised tariffs by exchanging votes on import duties for spending on internal improvements. President Andrew Jackson effectively delinked these issues and destroyed the North-West alliance by vetoing several internal improvements bills. South Carolina%u2019s refusal to enforce the existing high tariffs sparked the nullification crisis and paved the way for the Compromise Tariff of 1833, which promised to phase out tariffs above 20 percent over a nine year period. Although Congress could not credibly commit itself to the staged reductions or maintaining the lower duties, the growing export interests of the West %uF818 due, ironically, to transportation improvements that made agricultural shipments economically viable %uF818 gave the region a stake with the South in maintaining a low tariff equilibrium. Thus, the West%u2019s changing position on trade policy helps explain the rise and fall of tariffs over this period.

prices of traded goods relative to nontraded goods. The results suggest that the 30 percent average import tariff gave about a 17 percent implicit subsidy to import-competing producers and effectively taxed exporters at about 10 percent. Tariffs redistributed large amounts of income (about 8 percent of GDP), but the effect on consumers was roughly neutral. F or most of the nineteenth century the United States exported raw materials and food (cotton and tobacco from the South and wheat and corn from the Midwest) and imported manufactured goods. One of the most controversial aspects of U.S. economic policy in the decades after the Civil War was the use of high import tariffs to protect domestic manufacturers (located mainly in the North) from foreign competition. Tariff advocates claimed that high import duties helped American workers by expanding industrial employment and keeping wages high, while also giving farmers a steady demand in the home market for the food and raw materials that they produced. Tariff critics charged that those import duties raised the cost of living for consumers and harmed agricultural producers by effectively taxing their exports, thus redistributing income from consumers and farmers to benefit big businesses and capital-owners in the North. This protectionist trade policy was a contentious issue in American national politics during the Gilded Age of the 1880s. After post-Civil War reconstruction ended with the election compromise in 1877, tariff policy became the major source of partisan conflict: Republicans defended high protective tariffs and Democrats demanded that the tariff be used only to raise revenue. The election of 1888 hinged on the issue of tariff reform, and although the Democratic candidate (Grover Cleveland) won more popular votes, the Republican candidate (Benjamin

This paper studies the role of the French intercontinental trading maritime frontier in domestic capital accumulation at the end of the Ancien Régime. It uses O'Brien's method to measure the amount of annual profits generated in this sector. The net gain is then computed by computing how much income and savings the resources invested in the intercontinental sector would have had if they have been invested in the French domestic economy. Finally, using the notion of "heart of growth", the paper suggests that this frontier was more important for its attractiveness for domestic capitalists than for the riches it distributed.

Like the rest of the poor periphery, Mexico had to deal with de-industrialization forces between 1750 and 1913, those critical 150 years when the economic gap between the industrial core and the primary-product-producing periphery widened to such huge dimensions. Yet, from independence to mid-century Mexico did better on this score than did most countries around the periphery. This paper explores the sources of Mexican exceptionalism with de-industrialization. It decomposes those sources into those attributable to productivity events in the core and to globalization forces connecting core to periphery, and to those attributable to domestic forces specific to Mexico. It uses a neo-Ricardian model (with non-tradable foodstuffs) to implement the decomposition, and advocates a price dual approach, and develops a new price and wage data base 1750-1878. There were three forces at work that account for Mexican exceptionalism: first, the terms of trade and Dutch disease effects were much weaker; second, Mexico maintained secular wage competitiveness with the core; and third, Mexico had the autonomy to devise effective ways to foster industry. The first appears to have been the most important., En este artículo se analizan las fuentes de la excepcionalidad de México con una desindustrialización. Descompone las fuentes en las que la productividad atribuibles a los acontecimientos en el núcleo de las fuerzas de la globalización y de la conexión básica a la periferia, y los atribuibles a las fuerzas específicas de Mexico. Se utiliza un modelo neo-ricardiano (con los productos alimenticios no comercializables) para la aplicación de la descomposición, y aboga por un enfoque de doble precio, se desarrolla una nueva base de datos de precios y salarios entre 1750-1878.

In his seminal publications between the 1930s and 1960s, Frederick Lane offered three hypotheses regarding the impact of the Voyages of Discovery that have guided debate ever since. First, pepper and other spice prices did not rise in European markets in the century before the 1490s, and thus could not have %u2018pulled in%u2019 the oceanic explorations by their rising scarcity. Second, Portuguese circumnavigation of Africa did not lower European spice prices across the 16th century, implying that the discovery of the Cape route had no permanent effect on Euro-Asian market integration. Third, 15th century Venetian spice markets were already well integrated with those in Iberia and northern Europe, implying that Portugal could not have had an intra-European market integrating influence in the 16th century. Lane developed these influential hypotheses by relying heavily on nominal spice prices from Venice and the Levant. This paper revisits Lane%u2019s hypotheses by using instead relative spice prices, that is, accounting for inflation. It also draws on evidence from Iberia and northern Europe. In addition, it explores European market integration before and after 1503, the year when da Gama returned from his financially successful second voyage. Lane%u2019s three hypotheses are rejected: the impact of the Portuguese was profound on all fronts. We conclude by using a simple model of monopoly and oligopoly to decompose the sources of the Cape route%u2019s impact on European markets.

The preferences of citizens and their satisfaction level for the actions carried out in the public sectors are usually established by questionnaires, taking into account the specificities and priorities of each city. No global methodology exists to collect and to treat information because of various variables to be tested, upgradeable character of the human behaviour and his subjective perception. We propose a global methodology that will join two methods. With the method of fractional array to obtain a very low number of questions, we can pattern the relationship between the tested variables (price, security, etc.) and the characteristic of the wanted performance (such as the quality of the service). Interviewed people can be classified into socio-demographic categories by the tool user. Afterwards, the Analysis of Variance gives significant variables. A reduced model illustrating a “mean” behaviour is designed for all hypothetical situations. The proposed methodology is tested for the category “student” in two case studies: to evaluate the teaching quality at Faculty of Economic Sciences (FSE) within Oil and Gas University from Ploiesti (Romania) and to estimate the quality of using car parks in La Rochelle (France).

In his seminal publications between the 1930s and 1960s, Frederick Lane offered three hypotheses regarding the impact of the Voyages of Discovery that have guided debate ever since. First, pepper and other spice prices did not rise in European markets in the century before the 1490s, and thus could not have ‘pulled in’ the oceanic explorations by their rising scarcity. Second, Portuguese circumnavigation of Africa did not lower European spice prices across the 16th century, implying that the discovery of the Cape route had no permanent effect on Euro-Asian market integration. Third, 15th century Venetian spice markets were already well integrated with those in Iberia and northern Europe, implying that Portugal could not have had an intra-European market integrating influence in the 16th century. Lane developed these influential hypotheses by relying heavily on nominal spice prices from Venice and the Levant. This paper revisits Lane’s hypotheses by using instead relative spice prices, that is, accounting for inflation. It also draws on evidence from Iberia and northern Europe. In addition, it explores European market integration before and after 1503, the year when da Gama returned from his financially successful second voyage. Lane’s three hypotheses are rejected: the impact of the Portuguese was profound on all fronts. We conclude by using a simple model of monopoly and oligopoly to decompose the sources of the Cape route’s impact on European markets.

India was a major player in the world export market for textiles in the early 18th century, but by the middle of the 19th century it had lost all of its export market and much of its domestic market. India underwent secular deindustrialization as a consequence. While India produced about 25 percent of world industrial output in 1750, this figure had fallen to only 2 percent by 1900. We ask how much of India's deindustrialization was due to local supply-side forces -- such as political fragmentation in the 18th century and rising incidence of drought between the early 18th and 19th century, and how much to world price shocks. We use an open, three-sector neo-Ricardian model to organize our thinking about the relative role played by domestic and foreign forces. A newly compiled database of relative price evidence is central to our analysis. We document trends in the ratio of export to import prices (the external terms of trade) from 1800 to 1913, and that of tradable to non-tradable goods and own-wages in the tradable sectors back to 1765. Whether Indian deindustrialization shocks and responses were big or small is then assessed by comparisons with other parts of the periphery.

Why did states dominate investments in economic development in early America? Between 1787 and 1860, the national government%u2019s $54 million on promoting transportation infrastructure while the states spent $450 million. Using models of legislative choice, we show that Congress could not finance projects that provided benefits to a minority of districts while spreading the taxes over all. Although states faced the same political problems, they used benefit taxation schemes -- for example, by assessing property taxes on the basis of the expected increase in value due to an infrastructure investment. The U.S. Constitution prohibited the federal government from using benefit taxation. Moreover, the federal government%u2019s expenditures were concentrated in collections small projects -- such as lighthouses and rivers and harbors -- that spent money in all districts. Federal inaction was the result of the equilibrium political forces in Congress, and hence an equilibrium impotence.

The paper provides a comparative history of the economic impact of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. By focussing on the relative price evidence, it is possible to show that the conflict had major economic effects around the world. Britain's control of the seas meant that it was much less affected than other nations, such as France and the United States. Explicit welfare calculations are provided for four countries, Britain, France, Sweden and the United States. Welfare losses were largest in the US, where they were of the order of 5-6% per annum; by contrast, they lay between 3-4% per annum in France, and between 1.7-1.8% per annum in Britain. On the other hand, the conflict helped pave the way for the more liberal international economic environment of the long 19th century.

India was a major player in the world export market for textiles in the early 18th century, but by the middle of the 19th century it had lost all of its export market and much of its domestic market. Other local industries also suffered some decline, and India underwent secular de-industrialization as a consequence. While India produced about 25 percent of world industrial output in 1750, this figure fell to only 2 percent by 1900. We use an open, specific-factor model to organize our thinking about the relative role played by domestic and foreign forces in India’s de-industrialization. The construction of new relative price evidence is central to our analysis. We document trends in the ratio of export to import prices (the external terms of trade) from 1800 to 1913, and that of tradable to non-tradable goods and own-wages in the tradable sectors going back to 1765. With this new relative price evidence in hand, we ask how much of the de-industrialization was due to local supply-side influences (such as the demise of the Mughal empire) and how much to world price shocks (such as world market integration and rapid productivity advance in European manufacturing), both of which had to deal with an offset – the huge net transfer from India to Britain before 1815. Whether the Indian de-industrialization shocks and responses were big or small is then assessed by comparisons with other parts of the periphery.

This paper, a much revised version of an earlier paper (with different tables), seeks to explain why Spanish merino wools arrived so late in the Low Countries, only from the 1420s, why initially only those cloth producers known as the nouvelles draperies chose to use them, and why their resort to such merino wools allowed at least some of them to escape the current crisis afflicting the traditional 'old draperies', and indeed to expand to become the chief producers of woollen cloths in the southern Low Countries during the later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Although the merino have been by far the world’s finest wools, since at least the seventeenth century, English wools had enjoyed that supremacy in the medieval era. The Spanish sheep breeds that produced the first merino wools did not emerge until or after the 1340s; and it took many decades of experimental breeding and improved flock management to produce better quality wools in sufficient quantities for export (first to Italy). Before the introduction of merinos, the indigenous Spanish sheep had produced some of the worst wools in Europe. In the thirteenth century, they were used only in making very cheap, coarse, light cloths, when north-west Europe was producing a wide range of textiles, from such coarse light generally worsted-style fabrics to the most luxurious woollens. For reasons that I have elaborated elsewhere, the onset of a spreading stain of chronic and debilitating wars, from the 1290s, throughout the Mediterranean basin and north-west Europe, resulted in a sharp rise in transaction costs that made long-distance trade in cheaper textiles unprofitable. Consequently, by the 1330s, most north-west European draperies had abandoned export-oriented production of cheaper line textiles to concentrate on very high priced luxury woollens, those that could so much better 'bear the freight'. Furthermore, in Flanders, a considerable number of small-town and village producers engaged in precisely the same industrial re-orientation; but in producing genuine heavy weight woollens, they sought to imitate those of the large Flemish towns; and, in selling their cloths at lower prices, came to be known as the nouvelles draperies. This industrial reorientation meant that cloth producers in the Low Countries became all the more reliant on English wools, above all the traditional urban draperies (who came to use such wools exclusively). The English crown was quick to exploit this dependency by sharply raising export taxes, which, by the 1390s, constituted half of the sales price; and that in turn accounted for up to 70 percent of production costs in the Low Countries' urban draperies. Meanwhile, English cloth exports, very lightly taxed, gained an enormous cost and thus price advantage, but one not fully exploited until the fifteenth century. The catalyst for the final economic crisis, one that brought about the irredeemable decline of most of the urban draperies in the Low Countries, and the expansion of the nouvelles draperies, took place from 1429 to 1473, when the English crown sought to exploit the wool trade even further, in pursuing ill-advised bullionist policies: by requiring that the Calais Staple wool cartel sharply raise prices, that it seel all wools only for 'ready English money' without credit, and that it deliver one third of the sales receipts to the mint in gold bullion. Not until the 1470s did the Burgundians succeed in having these bullionist ordinances revoked. Meanwhile the traditional Flemish and Brabantine draperies, in continuing to use such high-cost English wools exclusively, for fear of losing customers, ensured their own rapid decline, indeed losing markets to both the English cloth trade and the nouvelles draperies, who also acquired considerable capital and labour from the declining draperies. Their success, as less quality-conscious imitators, lay in their willingness to use the far cheaper but now improved Spanish wools. An historic prejudice against pre-merino Spanish wools probably explains whey even they had not used these wools before the onset of this crisis. Having displaced the traditional draperies, the nouvelles draperies reached their apogee in the 1540s, when they were superseded by the sayetteries, after international market conditions had once more favoured longdistance trade in truly cheaper, light textiles.

The essential issue addressed in this paper is whether inefficient spatial arbitrage has significant welfare effects. The paper looks at the gains from improved market efficiency in transatlantic grain trade in the period 1855-1895. It shows that there is a law of one price equilibrium but that markets display spells of demand- or supply- constrained trade. Over time adjustments back to equilibrium as measured by the half-life of a shock become faster, and adjustment parameters are much larger than routinely reported in the PPP-literature. There are also significant gains from improved market efficiency but most of that improvement takes place in one step after the information ‘regime’ shifts from pre-telegraphic communication to a regime with swift transmission of information in an era with a sophisticated commercial press and telegraphic communication. Improved market efficiency probably stimulated trade more than falling transport costs.

La actual ola de Cooperación Sur-Sur, debido al gran énfasis que pone en la infraestructura como una condición necesaria aunque no suficiente para el desarrollo, crea nuevas oportunidades y desafíos para la integración regional de América Latina y el Caribe. ¿Cuáles son las implicaciones de las propuestas de Cooperación Sur-Sur para que la infraestructura se multiplique en la región? En este artículo se examina el papel cada vez más importante de la Cooperación Sur-Sur en la integración de las Guayanas, con especial énfasis en la infraestructura de transporte de Surinam y sus alrededores. Más específicamente, se analiza cómo la construcción de nuevas alianzas bilaterales y multilaterales por parte del gobierno de Surinam está cambiando las perspectivas de integración del país con la región y con los mercados globales. El artículo se enfoca en tres alianzas de Cooperación Sur-Sur que son particularmente pertinentes para la integración de la infraestructura de Surinam: sus relaciones bilaterales cada vez más profundas con China, su acercamiento cada vez mayor a Brasil y su condición de país miembro de la Iniciativa para la Integración de la Infraestructura Regional Suramericana (IIRSA). La Cooperación Sur-Sur tiene el potencial de transformar la infraestructura de transporte de Surinam y, en términos más generales, su economía, pero requiere un importante financiamiento, un estudio cuidadoso de los riesgos en juego y un considerable esfuerzo de coordinación de los interesados. La finalización de un corredor Surinam-Brasil propuesto por compañías chinas, con respaldo del Estado chino, no se vislumbra como un proyecto viable, puesto que depende no sólo de que se superen ciertos obstáculos del lado de Surinam sino también de que Brasil se comprometa con el plan. Por consiguiente, es posible que el actual interés de China se relacione más con la idea de mejorar el acceso al interior de Surinam -y favorecer la extracción de sus recursos naturales y su transporte vía el Caribe- que con la intención de facilitar el comercio de larga distancia a través del Amazonas. Aun si se completa sólo el tramo del corredor correspondiente al territorio de Surinam, el megaproyecto chino puede tener un impacto trascendental en la economía, la demografía y el medio ambiente del país, con probables efectos positivos indirectos (spillovers) en la esfera política. En cuanto a los planes contrapuestos que existen para Surinam y que se han gestado en el marco de IIRSA y de los acuerdos de cooperación bilateral, surgen nuevos interrogantes respecto de cómo coordinar tales planes divergentes...

This paper traces the evolution of the international market for wheat from an emerging market structure after the repeal of the Corn Laws to a mature market characterized by efficient arbitrage after the introduction of the transatlantic telegraph and the growth of trade. Efficiency is documented using traditional price gap accounting as well as error correction modelling. Markets which traded directly with each other as well as markets which did not trade with each other were integrated. The traditional bi-lateral focus in market integration studies has been extended to a multi-variate approach which generates new insights as to the pattern of diffusion of price shocks in the international economy. Shocks in the major importing nation, Britain, dominated in the emerging market phase while shocks in the major exporting economy, United States, dominated international prices movements at the end of the 19th century.

Current orthodoxy suggests that the Industrial Revolution began in Europe because European institutions promoted comparatively high levels of market efficiency. This Paper compares the actual efficiency of markets in Europe and China, two regions of the world that were relatively advanced in the pre-industrial period, but would start to industrialize about 150 years apart. Using data on the spatial dispersion of grain prices from the 17th to the 19th century, the analysis covers economies that in total account for about two-fifths of the world’s population in the mid-18th century. Our main findings include: first, the efficiency of markets in China and Europe was comparable in the late 18th century, except perhaps for areas of local economic activity, where Europe seems to have been ahead. Second, market efficiency in England was higher than in the Yangzi Delta region; and markets in England also performed better than in Western Europe as a whole. Third, market efficiency in Europe improved between 1780 and 1830 in a dramatic and sudden fashion in comparison to what came before. Rather than being a key condition for subsequent growth, gains in market efficiency and growth might have occurred simultaneously. We discuss the implications of these findings for a number of explanations for long-run growth and the Industrial Revolution.

Harsh arguments accompanied the development and the history of the Suez canal company either among nationalist Egyptians (just before, during or just after the nationalisation of the canal in 1956) or among some historians dedicated to find out clues of imperialist powers on key tools and moves of world economy. Whilst some historians (D. Landes, S. Saul, C. Niquet) denounced the financial tutelage exerted by the Suez company on Egypt, a commonplace opinion reproached the Company to have neglected the basic investment to modernize the Suez canal and had accused it of enlivening privileged incomes without managing a broad engineering project to allow the canal to reach standards of modern shipping. Our paper will scrutinise the evolution of the canal after its inception and emerging period, at its apex. It will gauge the financial figures of the investment moves of the company, the equipment of the canal management in Port-Saïd, Ismaïlia and Suez Port, the actual evolution of the canal ability to face transit constraints, and the technical level reached by the piloting entity. It will also raise the question of the Egyptianisation of the staff but will not consider the question of the contribution of the canal developments to Egypt’s development, which will take place elsewhere. Such a paper will be intimately linked to maritime history as it will study a key water-way of international maritime roads and ponder the relationship between the evolution of shipping and transit on one side and the equipment and modernisation of the Suez canal on the other side. Its long-range scope will avoid a too much restrained case study and help consider far-reaching debates and conclusions.

Geography shapes economic outcomes in a major way. This paper uses spatial empirical methods to detect and analyze trade patterns in a historical data set on Chinese rice prices. Our results suggest that spatial features were important for the expansion of interregional trade. Geography dictates, first, over what distances trade was possible in different regions, because the costs of ship transport were considerably below those for land transport. Spatial features also influence the direction in which a trading network is expanding. Moreover, our analysis captures the impact of new trade routes both within and outside the trading areas. We also discuss the long-run implications this might have.

Between 1807 and 1815, U.S. imports of manufactured goods were severely cut by Jefferson's trade embargo, subsequent non-importation measures, and the War of 1812. These disruptions are commonly believed to have spurred early U.S. industrialization by promoting the growth of nascent domestic manufacturers. This paper uses a newly available series on U.S. industrial production to investigate how this protection from foreign competition affected domestic manufacturing. On balance, the trade disruptions did not decisively accelerate U.S. industrialization as trend growth in industrial production was little changed over this period. However, the disruptions may have played a limited role in shifting resources from trade-dependent industries (such as shipbuilding) to domestic infant industries (such as cotton textiles).

Alexander Hamilton's Report on Manufactures (1791) is a classic document in the history of U.S. economic policy, but its fate in Congress is not well known. It is commonly believed that the report was never implemented. Although Hamilton's proposals for bounties (subsidies) failed to receive support, virtually every tariff recommendation put forward in the report was adopted by Congress in early 1792. These tariffs were not highly protectionist duties because Hamilton feared discouraging imports, which were the critical tax base on which he planned to fund the public debt. Indeed, because Hamilton's policy toward manufacturing was one of encouragement and not protection, those interests shifted their political support from the Federalists to the Jeffersonian Republicans during the 1790s.

How much of the good growth performance in Latin America between 1870 and 1913 can be assigned to the forces of globalization? Why was industrialization so weak? Why was inequality on the rise? This paper offers an answer to these questions. It starts by exploring the disadvantages associated with geographic isolation from world markets and the transport revolutions that helped liberate Latin America from that isolation, a pro-global force. It then asks how independence contributed to massive de-globalization during the decades of lost growth' between the 1820s and the 1870s. Next, it documents what happened to the external terms of trade in Latin America between 1820 and 1950: from the 1890s onwards the terms of trade deteriorated, but it also underwent spectacular improvement before the 1890s, suggesting that it had something to do with the fairly fast' Latin America growth during so much of the belle ‚poque. While booming relative prices of exports certainly fostered trade, policy suppressed it: tariff rates were higher in Latin America than almost anywhere else in the world between 1820 and 1929, long before the Great Depression. The paper then asks why. The answer is to be found mainly with revenue needs rather than with some precocious import substitution policy. High tariffs still had a powerful protective effect, regardless of motivation. However, protective policy was modified by those powerful and positive terms of trade shocks, yielding on net weak early industrialization. Finally, the paper documents that inequality rose in most of Latin America up to World War I, while it fell thereafter. The correlation between globalization and inequality is likely to have been causal.

This paper presents new estimates of the average tariff on total and dutiable U.S. imports from 1790 to 1820. These previously unavailable series are comparable to the tariff figures available from 1821 in the Historical Statistics of the United States. These early tariffs were much lower, on average, than those imposed later in the nineteenth century. The paper stresses the importance of deducting drawbacks (tariff rebates on imported goods that are subsequently re-exported) from total customs revenue in calculating the average tariff and briefly examines the structure of tariffs across goods. (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

This paper uses history to explore the empirical content of two determinants of tariff policy that have a long pedigree: the Stolper-Samuelson corollary to the Heckscher-Ohlin theorem, and the infant-industry argument for protection. It reports a set of world tariff facts for the 150 years between 1789 and 1938 that have not been well appreciated. First, tariff rates varied enormously around the globe with high tariff regions including the United States, Latin America, and industrially-lagging Europe, and the low tariff regions including Asia and the European industrial leaders. Second, while tariff rates rose on the European continent after the 1870s, they rose far more steeply and earlier in Latin America and industrially-lagging Europe, and more steeply even in Asia. Furthermore, after world tariff rates rose between 1865 and 1900, they then fell by half between 1900 and 1920, before tripling between 1920 and 1934. The most popular explanations for these world tariff facts come from two sources: Stolper-Samuelson -- scarce factors should lobby for protection when exposed to more intense world competition, and scarce factors should win the political battle if their votes carry heavy weight; and national industrial policy -- since late 20th century ISI policies must surely have their roots in the 19th century infant industry arguments. Looking at the same history that Eli Heckscher and Bertil Ohlin did to produce their famous theorem, or that Alexander Hamilton and Frederick List did to produce their equally famous infant industry argument, I find that latter is pretty much irrelevant until the 20th century, while the former starts playing an important role a little earlier when global forces open up in the 19th century. Throughout the 150 years, tariff policy was driven consistently (and often more importantly) by revenue needs and strategic tariff behavior. Geography, home market size, world economic environment, trading partner behavior, gunboats and tariff autonomy all mattered. So did Stolper-Samuelson.

Travel time losses in the Netherlands are likely to get worse in the years ahead if capacity is not added to cope with the demand. This particularly creates problems for business travel, which is characterized by a high “value of time”. In the Netherlands, policy makers have a long-standing interest in telework as a means to reduce mobility and consequently the need to expand physical infrastructure. However, currently the knowledge about the influence of teleworking on work activity and physical travel is limited. But in this paper, a framework is given to identify these relationships in-depth, based on a literature review. This results in an approach to measure business and commuting travel patterns of teleworkers.

Despite an enormous literature that has analyzed the comparative experiences of Latin America and Asia in post-World War II trade policy, almost no attention has been paid to the comparative experience prior to the wars. Even a cursory look at the best available empirical evidence reveals tremendous contrasts between the two regions. Latin America had the highest tariff barriers on earth before 1914; Asia had the lowest. Protected Latin America's belle ‚poque also boasted some of the most explosive growth performance on earth, while Asia registered some of the worst. What brought the two regions to the opposite ends of the tariff policy spectrum? And why are these quantum differences in economic performance so at odds with postwar conventional wisdom? We begin by describing a novel tariff database we have constructed from largely original sources. We explore the impact of colonial rule and unequal treaties' on Asian tariffs, as well as the impact of geography and political economy on Latin American tariffs. Limits to tariff policy autonomy explain one third of the vast difference between the two regions' tariffs before 1914; differences in the extent and structure of internal markets as well as the world tariff environment explain much of the rest. We conclude with an agenda for the future.