Globalization in Historical Perspective.

An NBER Conference on "Globalization in Historical Perspective, organized by Michael D. Bordo, NBER and Rutgers University, Alan M. Taylor, NBER and University of California, Davis, and Jeffrey G. Williamson NBER and Harvard University, took place on May 4 and 5 in California. The following topics were discussed:

Ronald Findlay, Columbia University, and Kevin O'Rourke, NBER and Trinity College, Dublin, "Commodity Market Integration, 1500-2000" Discussant: Douglas Irwin, NBER and Dartmouth College

Barry Chiswick, University of Illinois, Chicago, and Timothy Hatton, University of Essex, "International Migration and the Integration of Labor Markets" Discussant: Riccardo Faini, International Monetary Fund Maurice Obstfeld, NBER and University of California, Berkeley, and Alan M. Taylor, "Globalization and Capital Markets" Discussant: Richard Portes, NBER and London Business School J. Bradford DeLong, NBER and University of California, Berkeley, and Steven Dowrick, Australian National University, "Globalization and Convergence"

Discussant: Charles Jones, NBER and Stanford University

Peter H. Lindert, University of California, Davis, and Jeffrey G. Williamson, "Does Globalization Make the World More Unequal?"

Discussant: Lant Pritchett, Harvard University

Nicholas Crafts and Anthony Venables, London School of Economics, "Globalization and Geography: An Historical Perspective"

Discussant: Richard Baldwin, NBER and University of Geneva

Gregory Clark, University of California, Davis, and Robert Feenstra, NBER and University of California, Davis, "Technology in the Great Divergence".

Discussant: Joel Mokyr, Northwestern University

Peter L. Rousseau, NBER and Vanderbilt University, and Richard E. Sylla, NBER and New York University, "Financial Systems, Economic Growth, and Globalization" Discussant: Charles Calomiris, NBER and Columbia University

Michael D. Bordo, and Marc Flandreau, Observatoire Francais des Conjonctures Economiques, "Core, Periphery, Exchange Rate Regimes, and Globalization" Discussant: Anna Schwartz NBER Larry Neal, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and Marc Weidenmier, Claremont McKenna College, "The Global Economy in Crises: How the Gold Standard Absorbed Shocks, 1880-1914"

Discussant: Mark Taylor, University of Warwick

Barry Eichengreen, NBER and, University of California, Berkeley, and Harold James, Princeton University, "Monetary and Financial Reform in Two Eras of Globalization (and in Between)"

Discussant: Peter Kenen, Princeton University

Round Table Discussion: Costs versus Benefits of Globalization Chair: Peter Kenen; Clive Crook, The Economist; Gerardo Della Paolera, Universidad Torcuato di Tella; Niall Ferguson, Oxford University; Anne O. Krueger, NBER and Stanford University; and Ronald Rogowski, University of California, Los Angeles.

Findlay and O'Rourke discuss trends in international commodity market integration during the second half of the second millennium. Their focus is on intercontinental trade because the emergence of large-scale trade between the continents has especially distinguished the centuries following the voyages of Da Gama and Columbus. For earlier centuries, they rely more on qualitative information regarding trade routes, and information about quantity in terms of the volumes of commodities actually traded. For later centuries, they switch to more systematic price-based evidence. Among the main themes of the paper is the growing number of goods traded between continents over time (from high value-added to bulk commodities) and substantial commodity market integration, driven by technology (in the late nineteenth century) and politics (in the late twentieth century). However, this trend toward integration was not monotonic: politics can reinforce or offset the impact of technology...