MARKUS LAMPE

Deliberate Surrender? The Impact of Interwar Indian Protection

Zoom link:   https://unibocconi-it.zoom.us/j/96892934762

Abstract

What is the impact of trade policy in developing countries? We ad- dress the question in the context of interwar India, whose trade policies have been accused of harming British export interests. We quantify 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 sub- stantially boosted imports from the UK. Trade policy had a big impact on trade flows.

Bio

Markus Lampe is Professor of Economic and Social History at WU since September 2015 and Head of the Institute for Economic and Social History since October 2015.  Prior to these appointments, he was Associate Professor for Economic History and Institutions at the Department for Social Sciences at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. His research areas of interest are: history of international trade and trade policy, economic history of Denmark in the nineteenth century, especially agricultural history, history of international communication systems (post and telegraph), real estate markets and economic development: Spain, 1900-1930. His works have been published in the Journal of Economic History, in the European Review of Economic History, in the Economic History Review and the American Economic Review.