When Britain Turned Inward: The Impact of Interwar British Protection

Bromhead, Alan de; Fernihough, Alan; Lampe, Markus; O’Rourke, Kevin

doi:10.1257/aer.20172020

Cited by 46 publications

(45 citation statements)

References 57 publications

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“…We do indeed have data on Indian imports of many goods from many countries, which will be described in Section 4, but we lack Indian production data at the same level of disaggregation. We therefore construct a model similar in structure to that used by de Bromhead et al (2019), and which resembles in many respects the model of Broda and Weinstein (2006), whose notation we largely use.…”

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Second, we look at imports not just from the United Kingdom but from the 41 other countries in our dataset, and we take account of Indian trade policies affecting those countries also. Using data on trade and trade policy that is disaggregated by commodity and country is crucial, since as de Bromhead et al (2019) show doing so can matter greatly for the estimated impact of protection. Third, when estimating our trade elasticities we control for the impact of civil disobedience campaigns on trade flows, allowing for the possibility that these were different in the short and long run.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…deBromhead et al (2019) by estimating across nine categories of goods h, assuming a common elasticity σ h for all goods within a category (i.e. σ g = σ h ∀g ∈ h).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Deliberate Surrender? The Impact of Interwar Indian Protection

Arthi¹,

Lampe²,

Nair³

et al. 2020

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Research on the quantitative impact of interwar protection on trade flows remains scarce, and much of it has concluded that the impact was surprisingly small. In this paper we ask: Did Indian interwar protection hurt UK manufacturers, by raising tariffs on manufactured imports? Or did it favour UK interests, by discriminating against "foreign" (i.e. non-British) producers? We answer this question by quantifying the impact of trade policy on the value and composition of Indian imports, using novel disaggregated data on both trade policies and imports for 114 commodity categories coming from 42 countries. Indian trade elasticities were generally larger than those in the United Kingdom at the same time. We find that even though Indian protection lowered total imports, it substantially boosted imports from the UK. Trade policy had a big impact on trade flows.

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Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Deliberate Surrender? The Impact of Interwar Indian Protection

Arthi¹,

Lampe²,

Nair³

et al. 2020

Self Cite

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“…In a recent article, de Bromhead et al . (, p. 331) acknowledged the protective legislation of the 1920s, but asserted that ‘Notwithstanding these departures from nineteenth century practice, British trade policy remained predominantly liberal until 1930’. Is it possible that economic historians have advanced a narrative too dismissive of the protection that came before the Import Duties Act?…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The growth of manufacturing protection in 1920s Britain

Varian

2019

Scottish J Political Eco

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Prior to the Import Duties Act of 1932, an assortment of legislation expanded the scope of manufacturing protection in Britain. This article assesses the magnitude of manufacturing protection before the Import Duties Act and finds that, in 1930, 9% of net manufacturing output occurred in a protected industry. In the late 1920s, protected industries exhibited above-average growth in labour productivity. However, protection was disproportionately extended to newer manufacturing industries, which presented greater potential for productivity growth.

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“…The Commonwealth coefficient more than doubles throughout the interwar period, reaching a value of 269 in 1939. It shows a particularly strong upward trend after 1931, suggesting an intensification of trade within the Commonwealth due to the imposition of discriminatory trade policies by Britain(de Bromhead et al, 2019a).10…”

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confidence: 99%

Trade Blocs and Trade Wars during the Interwar Period

Jacks

Novy

2019

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What precisely were the causes and consequences of the trade wars in the 1930s? Were there perhaps deeper forces at work in reorienting global trade prior to the outbreak of World War II? And what lessons may this particular historical episode provide for the present day? To answer these questions, we distinguish between long-run secular trends in the period from 1920 to 1939 related to the formation of trade blocs (in particular, the British Commonwealth) and short-run disruptions associated with the trade wars of the 1930s (in particular, large and widespread declines in bilateral trade, the narrowing of trade imbalances, and sharp drops in average traded distances). We argue that the trade wars mainly served to intensify pre-existing efforts towards the formation of trade blocs which dated from at least 1920. More speculatively, we argue that the trade wars of the present day may serve a similar purpose as those in the 1930s, that is, the intensification of China-and UScentric trade blocs.

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When Britain Turned Inward: The Impact of Interwar British Protection

Cited by 46 publications

References 57 publications

Deliberate Surrender? The Impact of Interwar Indian Protection

Deliberate Surrender? The Impact of Interwar Indian Protection

The growth of manufacturing protection in 1920s Britain

Trade Blocs and Trade Wars during the Interwar Period

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