O'Rourke, Kevin H.

Thumbnail Image
Preferred name
O'Rourke, Kevin H.
Official Name
O'Rourke, Kevin H.

Research Output

Filters

5
5
Reset filters

Settings

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
  • Publication
      402
  • Publication
    Were Heckscher and Olin right? : putting history back into the factor-price equalization
    (University College Dublin. School of Economics, 1992)
    O'Rourke, Kevin H. 
    ;
    Williamson, Jeffrey G. 
    Due primarily to transport improvements, commodity prices in Britain and America tended to equalize 1870-1913. This commodity price equalization was not simply manifested by the great New World grain invasion of Europe. Rather, it can be documented for intermediate primary products and manufactures as well. Heckscher and, Ohlin, writing in 1919 and 1924, thought that these events should have contributed to factor price equalization. Based on Williamson's research reported elsewhere, Anglo-American real wages did converge over this period, and it was part of a general convergence between the Old and New World. This paper applies the venerable Heckscher-Ohlin trade model to the late 19th century Anglo-American experience and finds that they were right: at least half of the real wage convergence observed can be assigned to commodity price equalization. Furthermore, these events also had profound influences on relative land and capital scarcities. It appears that this late 19th century episode was the dramatic start of world commodity and factor market integration that is still ongoing today.
      135
  • Publication
    Land, labor and the wage-rental ratio : factor price convergence in the late nineteenth century
    (University College Dublin. School of Economics, 1993-05)
    O'Rourke, Kevin H. 
    ;
    Taylor, Alan M. 
    ;
    Williamson, Jeffrey G. 
    This paper augments the new historical literature on factor price convergence. The focus is on the late nineteenth century, when economic convergence among the current OECD countries was dramatic; and the focus is on the convergence between Old World and New, by far the biggest participants in the global convergence during the period; and the focus is on land and labor, the two most important factors of production in the nineteenth century. Wage-rental ratios boomed in the Old World and collapsed in the New, moving the resource-rich and labor scarce New World closer to the resource-scarce and labor-abundant Old World. The paper uses both computable general equilibrium models and econometrics to identify the forces causing the convergence. These include: commodity price convergence and the Heckscher-Ohlin Theorem of factor price equalization; migration, capital-deepening and frontier disappearance, factors stressed by Malthus, Ricardo, Wicksell and Viner; and factor-saving biases associated with induced-innovational theory, an endogenous response to relative factor scarcities.
      972
  • Publication
    Around the European periphery 1870-1913 : globalization, schooling and growth
    (University College Dublin. School of Economics, 1995-12)
    O'Rourke, Kevin H. 
    ;
    Williamson, Jeffrey G. 
    On average, the poor European periphery converged on the rich industrial core in the four or five decades prior to the First World War. Some, like the three Scandinavian economies, used industrialization to achieve a spectacular convergence on the leaders, especially in real wages and living standards. Some, like Ireland, seemed to do it without industrialization. Some, like Italy, underwent a less spectacular catch-up, and it was limited to the industrializing North. Some, like Iberia, actually fell back. What accounts for this variety? What role did trade and tariff policy play? What about emigration and capital flows? What about schooling? We offer a tentative assessment of these contending explanations and conclude that globalization was by far the dominant force accounting for convergence (and divergence) around the periphery. Some exploited it well, and some badly.
      625