------------ EH.NET BOOK REVIEW --------------
Published by EH.NET (August 2007)
Ronald Findlay, Rolf G.H. Henriksson, Hakan Lindgren and Mats
Lundahl, editors, _Eli Heckscher, International Trade, and Economic
History_. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006. xi + 560 pp. $50 (cloth),
ISBN" 0-262-06251-8.
Reviewed for EH.NET by Nick Crafts, Department of Economics,
University of Warwick.
This edited volume contains the proceedings of a 2002 conference
which marked the fifth anniversary of Eli Heckscher's death. The aim
of the symposium was "to create a forum where economists and economic
historians could meet to develop a picture of how relevant
Heckscher's research program and results are perceived to be by
current practitioners" (p. x). Each area of Heckscher's scholarship
gets a separate section (parts II to VI) and there are also sections
devoted to material of a more biographical nature relevant to the
development of Heckscher's views on methodology and politics (parts I
and VII). This review focuses on parts II to VI which are the most
interesting for the vast majority of the EH.Net audience.
Part II deals with Heckscher-Ohlin Trade Theory and contains chapters
by Ronald W. Jones and Kevin O'Rourke. The former re-evaluates
Heckscher's 1919 paper and concludes that its contribution is truly
seminal. The latter is an interesting econometric analysis of
attitudes to globalization which concludes that high-skilled workers
in OECD countries are relatively pro-globalization, as might be
supposed on a Stolper-Samuelson view of the world. Strikingly,
however, there is no paper that assesses how much Heckscher-Ohlin
trade theory still has to contribute to the understanding of trade
and industrial location in the era of the new international economics
and the new economic geography.
Part III considers Historical Applications of Heckscher-Ohlin Theory
and contains papers by Peter Temin, Ronald Findlay and Mats Lundahl,
and Jeffrey Williamson. The first two are papers that seek to make
bricks without (much) straw. Temin analyzes trade across the
Mediterranean Sea in biblical times, while Findlay and Lundahl
develop a Malthusian model with an endogenous frontier to look at
demographic shocks in the 800 years ending with the Black Death. This
is a nice model but seems to owe more to Malthus than to Heckscher.
Williamson's paper is an excellent econometric analysis of the
pattern of tariffs during 1870 to 1938 which concludes that this was
the era when Stolper-Samuelson (factor endowment) arguments mattered
a lot. The standard of the papers in this section is notably high but
unfortunately the breadth of the historical coverage is not really
adequate to fulfil the aspirations of the conference organizers.
Part IV turns to Mercantilism and offers four quite varied papers.
Lars Magnusson directly addresses the issue of how valuable
Heckscher's work is nowadays. He argues that although its analysis is
seriously dated, nevertheless there is still value in the impressive
command of historical detail. Deepak Lal explains how _Mercantilism_
helped him to make sense of cycles of economic repression and reform
in developing countries. Douglas Irwin summarizes his well-known
game-theoretic analysis of mercantilist rivalry between the British
and Dutch East India Companies. Finally, Joel Mokyr uses Heckscher as
an excuse to develop some interesting points about the role of
Enlightenment economic thinking -- especially the increasing
realization that trade was not a zero-sum game -- in stimulating the
Industrial Revolution. The sub-text of this section seems to be that,
actually, the current relevance of Heckscher's great work is quite
limited.
Part V deals with The Continental Blockade, with weighty
contributions from Francois Crouzet, Lance Davis and Stanley
Engerman, and Patrick O'Brien. These authors offer differing views as
to the current value of Heckscher's work. Davis and Engerman conclude
that, on the whole, it remains an essential work whose
interpretations are still acceptable, while O'Brien is much more
critical. He argues that to a modern audience the work seems
Anglocentric and fails properly to understand how and why the British
state defeated Napoleon's attempt to close continental markets to
British trade. Crouzet's position is intermediate in that he sees the
book as still deserving to be described as a masterpiece but
nevertheless a rather partisan account.
Part VI is about Swedish Economic History. The most interesting of
these papers to the general audience of economic historians is
Lennart Schon's essay on the 1870-1930 period of Swedish
industrialization. He argues that prior to 1890 this followed a
Heckscher-Ohlin trajectory based on exports of industrial products
based on Swedish natural resources but subsequently technological
progress was more central and a major structural transformation
ensued. The other two papers in this section are probably for a more
specialist readership. Johan Soderberg discusses Heckscher's vision
of economic development and suggests that his thesis that the Western
world reached its apogee around 1900 is unpersuasive. Mats Morell
looks at Heckscher's analyses of food consumption in early-modern
Sweden and suggests that although the conclusions may be more or less
valid everything else was seriously flawed. Here, too, it seems that
Heckscher no longer has a great deal to offer.
Overall, this is a collection in which many economic historians will
find something of interest and the quality of most of the
contributions is very high. On the other hand, few economic
historians will want to read the whole set of papers. Those who do
will quite possibly come to the view that, while Heckscher was indeed
a major figure in the development both of economics and of economic
history, his time has gone.
Nick Crafts is Professor of Economic History at the University of
Warwick. His most recent publication is a volume edited with Ian
Gazeley and Andrew Newell, _Work and Pay in Twentieth-Century
Britain_, Oxford University Press, 2007.
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Published by EH.Net (August 2007). All EH.Net reviews are archived at
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