IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ucn/wpaper/199207.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Were Heckscher and Olin right? : putting history back into the factor-price equalization

Author

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

Abstract

Due primarily to transport improvements, commodity prices in Britain and America tended to equalize 1870-1913. This commodity price equalization was not simply manifested by the great New World grain invasion of Europe. Rather, it can be documented for intermediate primary products and manufactures as well. Heckscher and, Ohlin, writing in 1919 and 1924, thought that these events should have contributed to factor price equalization. Based on Williamson's research reported elsewhere, Anglo-American real wages did converge over this period, and it was part of a general convergence between the Old and New World. This paper applies the venerable Heckscher-Ohlin trade model to the late 19th century Anglo-American experience and finds that they were right: at least half of the real wage convergence observed can be assigned to commodity price equalization. Furthermore, these events also had profound influences on relative land and capital scarcities. It appears that this late 19th century episode was the dramatic start of world commodity and factor market integration that is still ongoing today.

Suggested Citation

  • Kevin H. O'Rourke & Jeffrey G. Williamson, 1992. "Were Heckscher and Olin right? : putting history back into the factor-price equalization," Working Papers 199207, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
  • Handle: RePEc:ucn:wpaper:199207
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10197/1678
    File Function: First version, 1992
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Saygılı, Hülya, 2017. "Production fragmentation and factor price convergence," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 535-544.
    2. Kim, Hyeongwoo & Thompson, Henry, 2014. "Wages in a factor proportions model with energy input," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 495-501.

    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:ucn:wpaper:199207. 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: Nicolas Clifton (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/educdie.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.