When Britain turned inward: protection and the shift towards empire in interwar Britain

Working paper

International trade became much less multilateral during the 1930s. Previous studies, looking at aggregate trade flows, have argued that discriminatory trade policies had comparatively little to do with this. Using highly disaggregated information on the UK's imports and trade policies, we find that policy can explain the majority of Britain's shift towards Imperial imports in the 1930s. Trade policy mattered, a lot.

Authors: O'Rourke, K; de Bromhead, A; Fernihough, A; Lampe, M

• Publication status: Published
• Publisher: University of Oxford
• Series: Oxford Economic and Social History Working Papers
• Publication date: 2017-02-13
• Paper number: 152
• Keywords: interwar period; trade policy