When did globalization begin?

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dc.contributor.author	O’Rourke, Kevin H., Jeffrey G. Williamson
dc.date.accessioned	2010-06-28
dc.date.accessioned	2010-06-28T14:40:11Z
dc.date.available	2010-06-28T14:40:11Z
dc.date.issued	2010-06-28
dc.identifier.isbn	x648034509
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8073
dc.description.abstract	Some world historians attach globalization “big bang” significance to 1492 (Christopher Colombus stumbles on the Americas in search of spices) and 1498 (Vasco da Gama makes an end run around Africa and snatches monopoly rents away from the Arab and Venetian spice traders). Such scholars are on the side of Adam Smith who believed that these were the two most important events in recorded history. Other world historians insist that globalization stretches back even earlier. There is a third view which argues that the world economy was fragmented and completely deglobalized before the 19th century. None of these three competing views has explicitly shown the difference between trade expansion driven by booming demand and supply within the trading economies (e.g., the underlying fundamental, population growth), and trade expansion driven by the integration of markets between trading economies (e.g., the central manifestation of globalization, commodity price convergence). This paper makes that distinction, and then offers two novel empirical tests which allow us to discriminate between these three competing views. Both tests show: there is no evidence supporting the view that the world economy was globally integrated prior to 1492 and/or 1498; there is also no evidence supporting the view that these two dates had the economic impact on the global economy that world historians assign to them; but there is abundant evidence supporting the view that the 19th century contained a very big globalization bang. These tests involve a close look at the connections between factor prices, commodity prices and endowments world wide.	en_US
dc.format.extent	54 s.	en_US
dc.language	eng	en_US
dc.relation.ispartofseries	Nber working paper series;7632
dc.title	When did globalization begin?	en_US
dc.type	wp	en_US
dc.accessionstatus	modt10jun28 siso	en_US
dc.contributor.corporation	Copenhagen Business School. CBS	en_US
dc.contributor.department	Institut for Ledelse, Politik og Filosofi	en_US
dc.contributor.departmentshort	LPF	en_US
dc.contributor.departmentuk	Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy	en_US
dc.contributor.departmentukshort	LPF	en_US
dc.idnumber	x648034509	en_US
dc.publisher.city	Cambridge	en_US
dc.publisher.year	2000	en_US