Sweet diversity: Colonial goods and the welfare gains from global trade after 1492

IF 2.6 1区 历史学 Q1 ECONOMICS Explorations in Economic History Pub Date : 2022-10-01 DOI:10.1016/j.eeh.2022.101468
Jonathan Hersh , Hans-Joachim Voth
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Abstract

When did overseas trade start to matter for living standards? Traditional real-wage indices suggest that living standards in Europe stagnated before 1800. In this paper, we argue that welfare may have actually risen substantially, but surreptitiously, because of an influx of new goods. Colonial “luxuries” such as tea, coffee, and sugar became highly coveted. Together with more simple household staples such as potatoes and tomatoes, overseas goods transformed European diets after the discovery of America and the rounding of the Cape of Good Hope. They became household items in many countries by the end of the 18th century. We apply two standard methods to calculate broad orders of magnitude of the resulting welfare gains. While they cannot be assessed precisely, gains from greater variety may well have been big enough to boost European real incomes by 10% or more (depending on the assumptions used).

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甜蜜的多样性:1492年后殖民地商品和全球贸易带来的福利收益
海外贸易是什么时候开始影响生活水平的?传统的实际工资指数表明,欧洲的生活水平在1800年之前停滞不前。在本文中,我们认为,由于新商品的涌入,福利可能实际上已经大幅增加,但只是暗中增加。殖民地的“奢侈品”,如茶、咖啡和糖,变得非常令人垂涎。在发现美洲和绕过好望角之后,海外商品连同土豆和西红柿等更简单的家庭主食改变了欧洲人的饮食习惯。到18世纪末,它们成为许多国家的家庭用品。我们采用两种标准方法来计算由此产生的福利收益的大致数量级。虽然他们不能精确地评估,但更多样化的收益可能足以使欧洲的实际收入增加10%或更多(取决于所使用的假设)。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
2.50
自引率
8.70%
发文量
27
期刊介绍: Explorations in Economic History provides broad coverage of the application of economic analysis to historical episodes. The journal has a tradition of innovative applications of theory and quantitative techniques, and it explores all aspects of economic change, all historical periods, all geographical locations, and all political and social systems. The journal includes papers by economists, economic historians, demographers, geographers, and sociologists. Explorations in Economic History is the only journal where you will find "Essays in Exploration." This unique department alerts economic historians to the potential in a new area of research, surveying the recent literature and then identifying the most promising issues to pursue.
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