3- richard t. farmer schoolof business（3 - richard t .农民商业学院）.docVIP

As Good as Gold: What History Tells Us about the Pro-Trade Effects of Immigration William K. Hutchinson Department of Economics Vanderbilt University william.hutchinson@ James A. Dunlevy Emeritus, Department of Economics, Miami University and Associate, Bull Run Associated Social Scientists [B.R.A.S.S.] dunlevja@ 5 November 2008 The authors acknowledge with gratitude the helpful and encouraging comments of Bill Even, Phillip Coehlo, Mario Crucini, Solomos Solomou, and Bill Craighead. Jennifer Furhman and Dlynn Armstrong provided excellent assistance in collecting data. We also acknowledge financial support from the Richard T. Farmer School of Business at Miami University for data collection. All shortcomings of the paper, of course, are the responsibility of the authors. Abstract As Good as Gold: What History Tells Us about the Pro-Trade Effects of Immigration We contribute to the growing literature on the important role immigrant networks have played in the promotion of international trade between their host and origin countries. Specifically, we take advantage of the historical period of classical liberalism, 1870 – 1910, when both American trade and immigration flows were large, growing, and changing in composition, to examine the impact of the stock of immigrants, by nativity, in the United States on American trade with each of their home countries. Novel to this literature, we embed the immigrant network effect in a gravity model that also tests for the effect of monetary union, here the Classical Gold Standard, on trade. We find that the immigrant networks and gold both promoted trade and that the immigrant network effect was arguably as powerful a pro-trade force as was the gold standard. Our data span the exports of 44 commodities and imports of 78 commodities between the United States and 17 trading partner countries observed at 5-year intervals. We use the tobit procedure to estimate a modified gravity model with both