A new paper makes very simple argument, not only for the rise of empires, but for why in other circumstances we see Balkanization.
I've never heard it made before, it is quite a decent fit to the historical data, and it makes good logical sense.
Also, while the model is trained on the last two centuries, it isn't very challenging to generalize it to the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, the Islamic Empire, the Venetian Empire, early European colonialism back to the 1500s, and the pre-Columbian empires of the Americas.
I don't know the parts of West Asian, African, Chinese, or South Asian history relevant to this hypothesis well enough to evaluate its fit to empires in either of those places, however.
The last two centuries witnessed the rise and fall of empires. We construct a model which rationalises this in terms of the changing trade gains from empires.
In the model, empires are arrangements that reduce trade cost between an industrial metropole and the agricultural periphery. During early industrialisation, the value of such bilateral trade increases, and so does the value of empires. As industrialisation diffuses, and as manufactures become more differentiated, trade becomes more multilateral and intra-industry, reducing the value of empires.
Our results are consistent with long-term changes in income distribution and trade patterns, and with previous historical arguments.
From an NBER working paper (2022) by Roberto Bonfatti and Kerem Coşar.
Post-script: NBER is a U.S. economic research organization. Why is the paper using British spelling conventions?
2 comments:
Long-time lurker here
"Post-script: NBER is a U.S. economic research organization. Why is the paper using British spelling conventions?"
NBER working papers don't have spelling/editing standards like that, it's just a way of getting your work out while you're shopping it to different journals. Bonfatti works at University of Padova and University of Nottingham, so his main work will probably mostly follow British conventions. Coşar works at UVA but I wouldn't be surprised if he also learned British spelling conventions when learning English.
As for the paper itself, it seems quite interesting. I need to dig a bit more in depth into it.
Thanks for the insight.
Also, lurkers are appreciated too and are an important (and large supermajority) part of the intended audience of this blog.
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