TY  - JOUR
AU  - Jacks,David S.
AU  - Meissner,Christopher M.
AU  - Novy,Dennis
TI  - Trade Costs in the First Wave of Globalization
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 12602
PY  - 2006
Y2  - October 2006
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12602
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12602.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
David S. Jacks
Department of Economics
Simon Fraser University
8888 University Drive
Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6
CANADA
Tel: 778/782-5392
Fax: 778/782-5944
E-Mail: dsjacks@gmail.com

Christopher M. Meissner
Department of Economics
University of California, Davis
One Shields Avenue
Davis, CA 95616
Tel: +1 (530) 752-3108
Fax: +1 (530) 752-9382
E-Mail: cmmeissner@ucdavis.edu

Dennis Novy
Warwick University
E-Mail: d.novy@warwick.ac.uk
M3  - presented at "SI 2006 Development of the American Economy (DAE)", July 10-13, 2006
AB  - What drives globalization today and in the past? We employ a new micro-founded measure of bilateral trade costs based on a standard model of trade in differentiated goods to address this question. These trade costs gauge the difference between observed bilateral trade and frictionless trade. They comprise tariffs, transportation costs and all other factors that impede international trade but which are inherently difficult to observe. Trade costs fell on average by ten to fifteen percent between 1870 and 1913. We also use this measure to decompose the growth of global trade over that period and find that roughly 44 percent of the global trade boom can be explained by reductions in trade costs; the remaining 56 percent is attributable to economic expansion.
ER  -