Persistence in World Export Patterns and Productive Capabilities Across Two Globalizations

Authors

Isabella M. Weber, Economics Department, University of Massachusetts AmherstFollow
Gregor Semieniuk,, Political Economy Research Institute and Department of Economics, University of Massachusetts AmherstFollow
Junshang Liang, School of Economics, Nankai University
Tom Westland, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

Working Paper Number

2022-11

Publication Date

2022

Abstract

We construct a new global commodity-level export dataset to analyze the persistence of export patterns as proxies of productive capabilities across the first and the current waves of global- ization. We find that productive capabilities are path-dependent and historical capabilities are powerful predictors of countries’ incomes today. This is robust to controlling for persistence in geography, institutions, and colonial status, and confirmed by instrumenting past capabilities with asymmetric reductions in travel times following the switch from sailing to steamboats. We also show that the “great specialization” in primary goods and manufacturing goods exporters coincided with a great polarization in global diversification levels.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.7275/t1w3-w223

License

UMass Amherst Open Access Policy

Recommended Citation

Weber, Isabella M.; Semieniuk,, Gregor; Liang, Junshang; and Westland, Tom, "Persistence in World Export Patterns and Productive Capabilities Across Two Globalizations" (2022). Economics Department Working Paper Series. 328.
https://doi.org/10.7275/t1w3-w223