Distance, Empire, and British Exports Over Two Centuries
We introduce a new, publicly available dataset on the universe of British exports at the bilateral, commodity level from 1700 to 1899. We then pit two primary determinants of bilateral trade against one another: the trade-diminishing effects of distance versus the trade-enhancing effects of the British Empire. We find that the impact of distance fell by roughly two-thirds between the 1780s and 1860s. The influence of empire on British exports was very large throughout, but the impact of 18th century mercantilism was much higher than that of "liberal empire" in the late 19th century.
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Copy CitationDavid S. Jacks, Kevin Hjortshøj O'Rourke, Alan M. Taylor, and Yoto V. Yotov, "Distance, Empire, and British Exports Over Two Centuries," NBER Working Paper 27904 (2020), https://doi.org/10.3386/w27904.Download Citation
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