Developmental or defensive protectionism? A look at the tariff structures of 16 European countries, 1846-1910

Beschreibung

In his textbook on economic history, Rössner (2017, 263-267) analyzes the free trade debate based on Ricardo and List in the early nineteenth century. Ricardo argues for static comparative advantage, which, however – following List and Rössner – entails the danger of specialization in undynamic primary products (e.g., cash crops or minerals). This debate forms the intellectual background to what in economic history is known as the Bairoch debate or the tariff-growth paradox: Bairoch (1972) found for a small sample of continental European countries in the nineteenth century that countries with higher tariffs also grew faster. This finding was confirmed by some (O’Rourke 1997, Vamvakidis 20002, Jacks 2006), but challenged by others (Forman-Peck 1995, Irwin 2002, Schularick and Solomou 2011). Lehmann and O’Rourke (2011) and Tena-Junguito (2010) have shown that the positive overall correlation is much related to whether agriculture, manufacturing or fiscal goods are protected or whether protection is biased in favour of higher-skill or more capital intensive sectors. All evidence in the Bairoch debate, however, is from the late nineteenth century, when List and Ricardo were long dead and industrialization had spread already – and European countries met with competition from other continents. This keynote presents new data that expands the Tena-Junguito et al (2012) dataset of disaggregate tariffs and explores the structure of protection for 16 European countries between 1846 and 1911. It distinguishes between high- and low-skill manufactures, agricultural and mineral goods, and those used by European countries to raise revenue, mainly from tropical (colonial) agriculture.

Zeitraum	18 Okt. 2019
Ereignistitel	National Systems of Economy or European Integration – What can we learn from List for today? A One-Day Symposium on the Bicentenary of Friedrich List’s Address to the German Federal Assembly (1819)
Veranstaltungstyp	Keine Angaben
Bekanntheitsgrad	International