The Welfare Cost of Autarky: Evidence from the Jeffersonian Trade Embargo, 1807-1809

The United States came close to complete autarky in 1808 as a result of a self-imposed embargo on international shipping from December 1807 to March 1809. Monthly prices of exported and imported goods reveal the embargo's striking effect on commodity markets and allow a calculation of its welfare effects. A simple general equilibrium calculation suggests that the embargo cost about 8 percent of America's 1807 GNP, at a time when the trade share was about 13 percent (domestic exports and shipping earnings). The welfare cost was lower than the trade share because the embargo did not completely eliminate trade and because domestic producers successfully shifted production toward previously imported manufactured goods.

Antebellum Tariff Politics: Coalition Formation and Shifting Regional Interests

Throughout U.S. history, import tariffs have been put on a sustained downward path in only two instances: from the early-1830s until the Civil War and from the mid-1930s to the present. This paper analyzes how the movement toward higher tariffs in the 1820s was reversed for the rest of the antebellum period. Tariff politics in Congress during this period was highly sectional: the North supported high tariffs, the South favored low tariffs, and the West was a %u201Cswing%u201D region. In the 1820s, a coalition between the North and West raised tariffs by exchanging votes on import duties for spending on internal improvements. President Andrew Jackson effectively delinked these issues and destroyed the North-West alliance by vetoing several internal improvements bills. South Carolina%u2019s refusal to enforce the existing high tariffs sparked the nullification crisis and paved the way for the Compromise Tariff of 1833, which promised to phase out tariffs above 20 percent over a nine year period. Although Congress could not credibly commit itself to the staged reductions or maintaining the lower duties, the growing export interests of the West %uF818 due, ironically, to transportation improvements that made agricultural shipments economically viable %uF818 gave the region a stake with the South in maintaining a low tariff equilibrium. Thus, the West%u2019s changing position on trade policy helps explain the rise and fall of tariffs over this period.

Trade Restrictiveness and Deadweight Losses from U.S. Tariffs, 1859-1961

This paper calculates the Anderson-Neary (2005) trade restrictiveness index (TRI) for the United States using nearly a century of data. The results show that the standard import-weighted average tariff understates the TRI, defined as the uniform tariff that yields the same welfare loss as the existing tariff structure, by about 75 percent. The static deadweight welfare loss from the U.S. tariff structure is about one percent of GDP after the Civil War, but falls almost continuously thereafter to less than one-tenth of one percent of GDP by the early 1960s. On average, import duties resulted in a welfare loss of 40 cents for every dollar of revenue generated, slightly higher than contemporary estimates of the marginal welfare cost of taxation.

The Impact of Federation on Australia's Trade Flows

In 1901, six Australian states joined together in political and economic union, creating an internal free trade area and adopting a common external tariff. This paper investigates the impact of federation on Australia's internal and international trade flows by studying changes in the "border effect" over this time. This is possible because Australian states reported intra-Australian trade prior to 1901 and for eight years after federation. The results indicate that federation itself produced little change in Australia's trade patterns, but that the border effect increased substantially between 1906 and 1909 when the protectionist Lyne Tariff was imposed.

Did Import Substitution Promote Growth in the Late Nineteenth Century?

The positive correlation between import tariffs and economic growth across countries in the late nineteenth century suggests that tariffs may have played a causal role in promoting growth. This paper seeks to determine if high tariffs stimulated growth by shifting resources out of agriculture and into manufacturing. The most rapidly growing countries were indeed those that reduced the share of employment in agriculture. Tariffs in agricultural exporting (importing) countries may have promoted (retarded) this shift, although two high tariff, high growth, agricultural-exporting outliers (Argentina and Canada) experienced export-oriented growth and did not pursue import substitution policies. This raises the question of whether economic growth led to changes in the structure of employment rather than changes in employment leading to economic growth.

How Did the United States Become a Net Exporter of Manufactured Goods?

The United States became a net exporter of manufactured goods around 1910 after a dramatic surge in iron and steel exports began in the mid-1890s. This paper argues that natural resource abundance fueled the expansion of iron and steel exports in part by enabling a sharp reduction in the price of U.S. exports relative to other competitors. The commercial exploitation of the Mesabi iron ore range, for example, reduced domestic ore prices by 60 percent in the mid-1890s and was equivalent to nearly 30 years of industry productivity growth in its effect on iron and steel export prices. The results are consistent with Wright's (1990) finding that U.S. manufactured exports were natural resource intensive at this time and have implications for recent work suggesting that resource abundance may be a curse rather than a blessing for economic development.

Gold Sterilization and the Recession of 1937-38

The Recession of 1937-38 is often cited as illustrating the dangers of withdrawing fiscal and monetary stimulus too early in a weak recovery. Yet our understanding of this severe downturn is incomplete: existing studies find that changes in fiscal policy were small in comparison to the magnitude of the downturn and that higher reserve requirements were not binding on banks. This paper focuses on a neglected change in monetary policy, the sterilization of gold inflows during 1937, and finds that it exerted a powerful contractionary force during this period. The transmission of this monetary shock to the real economy appears to have worked through lower asset (equity) prices and higher interest rates.

New Estimates of the Average Tariff of the United States, 1790-1820

This paper presents new estimates of the average tariff on total and dutiable U.S. imports from 1790 to 1820. These previously unavailable series are comparable to the tariff figures available from 1821 in the Historical Statistics of the United States. These early tariffs were much lower, on average, than those imposed later in the nineteenth century. The paper stresses the importance of deducting drawbacks (tariff rebates on imported goods that are subsequently re-exported) from total customs revenue in calculating the average tariff and briefly examines the structure of tariffs across goods.