[go: up one dir, main page]

  EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

The Heckscher-Ohlin Model Between 1400 and 2000: When It Explained Factor Price Convergence, When It Did Not, and Why

Jeffrey Williamson () and Kevin O'Rourke

No 2372, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: There are two contrasting views of pre-19th century trade and globalization. First there are the world history scholars like Andre Gunder Frank who attach globalization ?big bang' significance to the dates 1492 (Christopher Columbus stumbles on America in search of spices) and 1498 (Vasco da Gama makes an end run around Africa snatching monopoly rents away from Arab and Venetian spice traders). Such scholars are on the side of Adam Smith who believed that these were the two most important events in recorded history. Second, there is the view that the world economy was still fragmented before the 19th century. This paper offers a novel way to discriminate between these competing views and we use it to show that there is no evidence that the Ages of Discovery and Commerce had the economic impact on the global economy the world historians assign to them, while there is plenty of evidence of a very big bang in the 19th century. The test involves a close look at the connections between factor prices, commodity prices and endowments world-wide.

Keywords: Factor prices; Globalization; History (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F14 N70 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2000-02
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP2372 (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: The Heckscher-Ohlin Model Between 1400 and 2000: When it Explained Factor Price Convergence, Ehen it Did not, and Why (1999)
Working Paper: The Heckscher-Ohlin Model Between 1400 and 2000: When It Explained Factor Price Convergence, When It Did Not, and Why (1999) Downloads
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:2372

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP2372

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 ().

 
Page updated 2024-12-05
Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:2372