Calendrier du 17 janvier 2023
PSI-PSE (Petit Séminaire Informel de la Paris School of Economics) Seminar
Du 17/01/2023 de 17:00 à 18:00
R1-13
PLANTEROSE Bluebery (PSE)
Fighting Climate Change: International Attitudes Toward Climate Policies
Applied Economics Lunch Seminar
Du 17/01/2023 de 12:30 à 13:30
Salle R2.21, Campus Jourdan
RASTER Tom ()
Breaking the ice: The persistent effect of pioneers on trade relationships
There is substantially less trade than is theoretically predicted, and many countries do not trade at all with each other. Pioneers - first movers to new markets - are hypothesized to play an important role in establishing lasting trade relationships and a country 'self-discovering' its comparative advantage. This paper offers a first causal test of the role of pioneers, drawing on millions of captain voyages between the Baltic and North Sea between 1500 and 1855. For identification, I rely on drastic year-to-year variation in sea ice, which exogenously re-routes captains to towns they or their peers had not previously visited. I find that once (randomly) exposed to a new port, captains and their townspeople are very likely to return to this town and that trade flows and the export mix are lastingly altered. These findings highlight the importance of pioneers and policies, such as export promotion, that foster them.