NBER Publications by Ronald Findlay

This paper provides a summary of what is known about trends in international commodity market integration during the second half of the second millennium. The range of goods which have been traded between continents since the Voyages of Discovery has steadily increased over time, and there has been substantial commodity market integration over the period, driven by technology in the 19th century and politics in the late 20th century. However, this trend towards greater market integration was not monotonic; it was periodically interrupted by shocks such as wars and world depressions, or by endogenous political responses to the distributional effects of globalization itself. In some periods politics has reinforced the effects of technology, while in other periods it has offset them. In sever...

This paper explores the relationship between government policy and comparative advantage in a neoclassical model of international trade. A specification of the Ricardo-Viner model with public goods and public inputs is presented that is used to study the role that government policy can play in the determination and promotion of comparative advantage and in the maximization of the gains that may be obtained from international trade. The model is also used to study the influence that international trade can exert on the scale and scope of government activity. The paper endeavors to reconcile a positive theory of trade and government with the apparent shift in measured productivity that often follows an opening to trade. The paper concludes by interpreting the model in the context of recent p...