Replication dataset and codes - Hersh and Voth "Sweet Diversity: Colonial Goods and the Welfare Gains from Global Trade after 1492"

Principal Investigator(s):  View help for Principal Investigator(s) Hans-Joachim Voth, University of Zurich; Jonathan Hersh, U Chapman

Version:  View help for Version V1

Name File Type Size Last Modified
Clark_Wages_decades.txt text/plain 6.9 KB 06/27/2022 01:28:AM
England, Commodity Prices, 1700-1869, annual (Clark).xls application/vnd.ms-excel 261.5 KB 06/26/2022 11:35:PM
Figure_1.dta application/x-stata-dta 7.9 KB 06/26/2022 11:33:PM
Figure_1.tif image/tiff 8.2 MB 06/27/2022 01:58:AM
Figure_2.tif image/tiff 8.2 MB 06/27/2022 01:51:AM
NavyEstablishment_Wachter_1715-1859.csv text/csv 1.5 KB 06/27/2022 02:17:AM
PBH index.xls application/vnd.ms-excel 48 KB 06/26/2022 11:52:PM
annual coffee-short.txt text/plain 3.6 KB 05/11/2022 12:59:AM
annual sugar-short.txt text/plain 3.5 KB 04/29/2022 12:40:AM
annual tea-short.txt text/plain 3.6 KB 06/16/2022 12:46:AM

Project Description

Summary:  View help for Summary The deposited data allows replication of the statistical analysis and figures in "Sweet Diversity: Colonial Goods and the Welfare Gains from Global Trade after 1492" (Hersh and Voth 2023). The question we investigate is simple: When did overseas trade start to matter for living standards? Traditional real-wage indices suggest that living standards in Europe stagnated before 1800. In this paper, we argue that welfare may have actually risen substantially, but surreptitiously, because of an influx of new goods. Colonial “luxuries” such as tea, coffee, and sugar became highly coveted. Together with more simple household staples such as potatoes and tomatoes, overseas goods transformed European diets after the discovery of America and the rounding of the Cape of Good Hope. They became household items in many countries by the end of the 18th century. We apply two standard methods to calculate broad orders of magnitude of the resulting welfare gains. While they cannot be pinned down precisely, gains from greater variety may well have been big enough to boost European real incomes by 10% or more (depending on the assumptions used)

Scope of Project

Subject Terms:  View help for Subject Terms new goods; trade; living standards; real incomes
Geographic Coverage:  View help for Geographic Coverage England


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Published Versions

V1 [2022-06-27]

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