IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/5112.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Open Economy Forces and Late 19th Century Scandinavian Catch-Up

Author

Listed:
  • Kevin O'Rourke
  • Jeffrey G. Williamson

Abstract

Scandinavia recorded very high growth rates between 1870 and 1914, catching up with the leaders. This paper estimates that about two-thirds of the Scandinavian catching up on Britain was due to the open economy forces of global factor and commodity market integration. All of the Scandinavian catching up on America was due to the same open economy forces. The question for the economist is: Why does the new growth theory spend so little time dealing with these open economy forces? The question for the economic historian is: Can the breakdown of global factor and commodity markets after 1914 explain a large share of the cessation of convergence up to 1950? Can the spectacular OECD convergence achieved after 1950 be explained by the resumption of the pre-1914 open economy conditions that contributed so much to Scandinavian catch-up?

Suggested Citation

  • Kevin O'Rourke & Jeffrey G. Williamson, 1995. "Open Economy Forces and Late 19th Century Scandinavian Catch-Up," NBER Working Papers 5112, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:5112
    Note: DAE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w5112.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. José Luis Cendejas & Félix-Fernando Muñoz & Nadia Fernández-de-Pinedo, 2017. "A contribution to the analysis of historical economic fluctuations (1870–2010): filtering, spurious cycles, and unobserved component modeling," Cliometrica, Springer;Cliometric Society (Association Francaise de Cliométrie), vol. 11(1), pages 93-125, January.
    2. Crafts, Nicholas, 1999. "Quantitative economic history," Economic History Working Papers 22390, London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Economic History.
    3. O’Rourke, Kevin Hjortshøj, 2019. "Economic History and Contemporary Challenges to Globalization," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 79(2), pages 356-382, June.
    4. Matthew Slaughter, 2001. "Does trade liberalization converge factor prices? Evidence from the antebellum transportation revolution," The Journal of International Trade & Economic Development, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 10(3), pages 339-362.
    5. Kevin H. O'Rourke, 2003. "The Era of Free Migration: Lessons for Today," Trinity Economics Papers 200315, Trinity College Dublin, Department of Economics.
    6. Taylor, Alan M., 1999. "Sources of convergence in the late nineteenth century," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 43(9), pages 1621-1645, October.
    7. Nina Boberg-Fazlić & Markus Lampe & Paul Sharp, 2021. "The Sleeping Giant Who Left for America: The Determinants and Impact of Danish Emigration During the Age of Mass Migration," Working Papers 0213, European Historical Economics Society (EHES).
    8. Berger, Thor & Enflo, Kerstin, 2017. "Locomotives of local growth: The short- and long-term impact of railroads in Sweden," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 124-138.
    9. Timothy J. Hatton, 2010. "The Cliometrics Of International Migration: A Survey," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(5), pages 941-969, December.
    10. O'Rourke, Kevin H. & Williamson, Jeffrey G., 1997. "Around the European periphery 1870–1913: Globalization, schooling and growth," European Review of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 1(2), pages 153-190, August.
    11. Kevin Hjortshøj O'Rourke, 2018. "Economic history and contemporary challenges to globalization," Oxford Economic and Social History Working Papers _167, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    12. Ericsson, Johan & Molinder, Jakob, 2018. "A Workers’ Revolution in Sweden? Exploring Economic Growth and Distributional Change with Detailed Data on Construction Workers’ Wages, 1831–1900," Lund Papers in Economic History 181, Lund University, Department of Economic History.
    13. David Andersson & Mounir Karadja & Erik Prawitz, 2022. "Mass Migration and Technological Change," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 20(5), pages 1859-1896.
    14. Kristina Lilja & Pernilla Jonsson, 2015. "Clothes as a store of value: second-hand trade in a Swedish small town, 1830-1900," Working Papers 15007, Economic History Society.
    15. Adrian Palacios-Mateo, 2023. "Education and household decision-making in Spanish mining communities, 1877–1924," Cliometrica, Springer;Cliometric Society (Association Francaise de Cliométrie), vol. 17(2), pages 301-340, May.
    16. Mounir Karadja & Erik Prawitz, 2019. "Exit, Voice, and Political Change: Evidence from Swedish Mass Migration to the United States," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 127(4), pages 1864-1925.
    17. Waldenström, Daniel, 2016. "Wealth-Income Ratios in a Small, Developing Economy: Sweden, 1810–2014," Working Paper Series 1134, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    18. Collins, William J., 1999. "Labor Mobility, Market Integration, and Wage Convergence in Late 19th Century India," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 36(3), pages 246-277, July.
    19. Alfonso Herranz Loncan & Daniel Aurelio Tirado Fabregat, 1996. "Foreign trade traps in the european periphery: Spain, 1870-1913," Working Papers in Economics 5, Universitat de Barcelona. Espai de Recerca en Economia.
    20. Larsson, Svante, 2005. "Globalisation, inequality and Swedish catch up in the late nineteenth century. Williamson’s real wage comparisons under scrutiny," Göteborg Papers in Economic History 2, University of Gothenburg, Unit for Economic History.
    21. Bengtsson, Erik & Prado, Svante, 2019. "The rise of the middle class: The income gap between salaried employees and workers in Sweden, 1830-1935," Lund Papers in Economic History 186, Lund University, Department of Economic History.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:5112. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.