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International competition in the first wave of globalization: new evidence on the margins of trade
Author(s) -
Betrán Concepción,
Huberman Michael
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
the economic history review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.014
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1468-0289
pISSN - 0013-0117
DOI - 10.1111/ehr.12115
Subject(s) - competition (biology) , fell , globalization , unit (ring theory) , capital good , capital (architecture) , economics , textile , core (optical fiber) , dimension (graph theory) , international trade , textile industry , business , international economics , market economy , goods and services , geography , engineering , ecology , telecommunications , mathematics education , cartography , mathematics , archaeology , pure mathematics , biology
We pose a seemingly ageless question in economic history. To what extent did new entrants in the late nineteenth‐century cotton‐textile industry threaten the customary markets of the E uropean core? Exploiting a newly constructed dataset on textile imports to S pain, we find that as trade costs fell, new rivals began to sell a greater variety of products. Along this dimension, competition can be said to have increased. In response, producers in Europe adjusted the type and number of goods exported. By 1914, specialization mapped onto endowments of skilled labour, capital, and access to raw materials. While firms in new industrializing countries exported low‐end varieties, incumbents in the core shipped high‐end goods, unit values increasing with levels of development.