The French Touch: Product Quality and France’s Great Trade Liberalization, 1850-1874

We explore changes in product quality during France’s major liberalization episode of the mid-nineteenth century. Using new data and existing techniques from the international trade literature, we investigate the relative quality of French products versus those of international competitors, within industry changes in quality, and within product quality changes. France produced relatively high quality/high unit value products in the traded sector throughout the period. Liberalization was associated with an overall decline in the quality of French exports. However, some of the best-selling exports experienced an apparent rise in quality around the time of liberalization. As for imports, while French spending may have switched to lower quality products due to liberalization, lower tariffs were associated with rising within product quality.