World Trade, 1800-1938: a New Data-Set
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Working Papers in Economic History January 2016 WP 16-01 World trade, 1800-1938: a new data-set Giovanni Federico and Antonio Tena-Junguito Abstract This paper presents our data-base on world trade from 1800 to 1938. We have collected or estimated series of imports and exports, at current and constant (1913) prices and at current and at constant (1913) borders, for 149 polities. After a short review of the available series, we describe the methods for the construction of the data-base. We then deal with the criteria for the inclusion of polities, the representativeness of our series, the main types of sources, the procedures of deflation and, when necessary, of adjustments to 1913 borders. We discuss the details of the estimation of our polity series in Appendix B. Following Feinstein and Thomas (2001), we assess the reliability of our polity estimates. In the last two sections we present our trade series at current and 1913 borders and compare them with other available series. All data are available in a World Trade 1800-1938 Appendix Excel File. Keywords: World Trade, new series, 19th and 20th century JEL Classification: F14, N10 Antonio Tena-Junguito: Departamento de Ciencias Sociales, and Researcher at Instituto Figuerola, Universidad Carlos III, Calle Madrid, 126, 28903 Getafe, Spain. E-mail: [email protected] http://portal.uc3m.es/portal/page/portal/dpto_ciencias_sociales/profesorado/antonio_tena Giovanni Federico: Department of Economics and Management Università di Pisa. Via Cosimo Ridolfi, 10, Pisa PI (Italy). E-mail: [email protected] UNIVERSIDAD CARLOS III DE MADRID c/ Madrid 126 28903 Getafe (Spain) Tel: (34) 91 624 97 97 Site: http://portal.uc3m.es/portal/page/portal/instituto_figuerola/home/publications/working_papers Publisher: Carlos III University of Madrid. Figuerola Institute of Social Sciences History www.uc3m.es/if Series: Working Papers in Economic History ISSN: 2341‐2542 Electronic version of these working paper series available on: http://hdl.handle.net/10016/16 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution‐NonCommercial‐ NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. 1 World trade, 1800-1938: a new data-set (Giovanni Federico & Antonio-Tena Junguito) Abstract This paper presents our data-base on world trade from 1800 to 1938. We have collected or estimated series of imports and exports, at current and constant (1913) prices and at current and at constant (1913) borders, for 149 polities. After a short review of the available series, we describe the methods for the construction of the data-base. We then deal with the criteria for the inclusion of polities, the representativeness of our series, the main types of sources, the procedures of deflation and, when necessary, of adjustments to 1913 borders. We discuss the details of the estimation of our polity series in Appendix B. Following Feinstein and Thomas (2001), we assess the reliability of our polity estimates. In the last two sections we present our trade series at current and 1913 borders and compare them with other available series. All data are available in a World Trade 1800-1938 Appendix Excel File. 1) Introduction The growth of world trade before 1913 and its fall in the 1930s are regarded as essential components of the globalization before World War One, and its retreat during the Great Depression (Findlay and O’Rourke 2007, Meissner 2014). This conventional wisdom relies on series of world trade, which, as we argue in Section Two, are at best incomplete and at worst flawed. They date back to the 1960s-1970s and thus they cannot take recent estimates of trade by country into account. Last but surely not least, all the series start in 1850 or later, while a growing body of literature has singled out the first half of the 19th century as the key period of integration of the commodity markets in Europe (Jacks 2005, Federico 2011, Federico 2012) and outside Europe (Uebele 2011, Sharp and Weisdorf 2013 Chilosi and Federico 2015). Thus, the existing series cannot properly address several key historical questions. When did the rise of trade start? Was the growth steady and widespread, or did rates differ across time and countries? How big was the impact of World War One? How much did trade recover in the 1920s? And so on. We have decided to address these issues starting from a clean sheet. We have re- estimated import and export at current and constant prices by “trading polity” from 1800 to 1938. The data-set includes ten (very important) polities in 1800 but its coverage grows quickly and since 1850 it is complete –i.e. it includes (almost) all existing polities. From then on, the list of polities changes only whenever a new one is established or an old one disappears. We compute world trade as a simple sum of exports for all polities after 1850, 2 and we extrapolate backwards the 1850 level with indexes of three different time-invariant samples. We also estimate a series of trade at constant (1913) borders, which should not be affected by changes in the political map. This working paper illustrates the nuts and bolts of the construction of this data-base. Section Three discusses our definition of trading polity, the criteria for inclusion in the data-set and the representativeness of the series of world trade. Section Four sketches out the general procedure of estimation, starting from the definition of trade, which follows as much as possible the criteria set by United Nations in the 1950s and provides some general information about our sources and their main shortcomings. Section Five describes the conversion from current to constant prices, and Section Six the adjustment from current to 1913 borders. These two adjustments are independent: we use the same deflation procedure for series at current and 1913 borders and the same boundary adjustment for series at current and 1913 prices. These three Sections deal only with general principles: we discuss the details of the reconstruction of series for each polity in Appendix B. In Section Seven we assess the reliability of our estimates, following Feinstein and Thomas (2001) and in Section Eight we give a flavour of our main results. We compare our series with the available ones in Section Nine and we conclude in Section Ten by sketching a research agenda to improve and extend in time the data-base. 2) The available series of world trade The series of foreign trade are the oldest and the most plentiful historical macroeconomic data-sets, with the possible exception of those for fiscal revenue. In fact, the balance of trade was a real obsession for rulers in the age of mercantilist policies. The United Kingdom started to publish foreign trade statistics in 1696, and it was joined by France and the United States in the 18th century. In the 19th century these pioneers were imitated by almost all independent states and also by colonial powers, which wanted to know the trade potential of their colonies. Towards the end of the century, the statistical offices of major countries started to collect polity series at current prices in handy comparative tables in their Statistical yearbooks (Germany. Statistical Yearbook, 1905; United States of America (1909). Historical Statistics. Statistical Abstract of Foreign Countries; France. Statistical Yearbook. Annuarie Statistique della France (1913, 1939). The League of Nations imitated them immediately after its establishment, publishing since 1919 series of trade by country.1 1 The League of Nations started to publish the foreign trade data in the Memorandun of Balance of Payments and Foreign Trade Balnces (1925, first issue 1910-1924), annually until 1932. Later change its 3 As early as 1852, Levi (1852) summed up the available data in the first ever estimate of world total, and he was later imitated by others, most notably Giffen (1882), Von Neumann-Spallart (1885-1895), and Mulhall (1892), who put forward tentative figures of world trade for benchmark years since 1720. Schou (1900) was the first to estimate a constant price series, by deflating Von Neumann-Spallart’s series with the index of London prices by Sauerbeck (1886 and ff.). In the interwar years, the torch passed to official institutions. The Germany. Statistical Yearbook (1943) and the League of Nations Review of World Trade (1933-38) computed series of total trade (import plus exports) at constant prices, respectively since 1900 and 1913. This definition of trade counts twice the same flows and includes the costs of transportation, which are usually included in imports but not in exports (Section Four). Thus, world trade is more accurately measured by exports only. Series of world exports at constant prices were published after the war by the United Nations (1962), Maddison, A. (1962), W.A. Lewis (1981) and J.F. Vidal (1990).2 They cover different periods (respectively 1900-1938, 1881-1938, 1850-1913 and 1890-1938) and they all have a gap, of different length, during World War One. name in Review of World Trade and since 1933 published also annualy as International Trade Statistics 1933-1938. 2 Hilgerdt (1945) and Svennilson (1954) are arguably intermediate products of the research effort by the League of Nations and then the United Nations. Rostow (1978) uses Mulhall’s series, slightly adjusted and deflated with an index of domestic British prices, for the period to 1870, and the Svennilson-Hilgerdt data thereafter. The series by Bairoch (1976 tab.84) refers to Europe only. 4 Figure 1 World exports, constant prices (1913=100) 140 140 120 120 100 100 80 80 60 60 40 40 20 20 0 0 1850 1870 1890 1910 1930 1850 1870 1890 1910 1930 UN Historical Vidal 140 140 120 120 100 100 80 80 60 60 40 40 20 20 0 0 1850 1870 1890 1910 1930 1850 1870 1890 1910 1930 Lewis Maddison Sources: Appendix D.