Abstract
The literature on British economic history presumes thatBritain was a free trader after the repeal of the Corn Lawsand that her tariff levels were thus below those which wereoptimal for maximizing utility. Presumably, if the optimalBritish tariffs had been positive and greater than the levelsestablished by mid-century, a reduction to zero of all tariffsthat remained would have lowered British welfare even further.In this paper, we use a simple computable general equilibriummodel to simulate a drop in all British tariffs to zero. Theresulting substantial net increase in British welfaresuggests that British tariffs were much higher than would beconsistent with an optimum tariff policy. More important, thesize of British losses from her high tariff levels suggeststhat British policy was not consistent with the stance of anideological free trader.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Anderson, G.M. and Tollison, R.D. (1985). Ideology, interest groups, and the repeal of the Corn Laws. Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics 141: 197–212.
Anderson, J.E. and Neary, J.P. (1994). Measuring the restrictiveness of trade policy. The World Bank Economic Review 8: 151–169.
Anderson, J.E. (1995). Trade restrictiveness benchmarks. Mimeo.
Dakhlia, S. (2002). A generalized Trade Restrictiveness Index. SSRN Working Paper.
France (1858). Administration des douanes. Tableau Décennal du Commerce de la France, 1847–1856 (Paris).
France (1878). Administration des douanes. Tableau Décennal du Commerce de la France, 1867–1876 (Paris).
Irwin, D.A. (1988). Welfare effects of British free trade: debate and evidence from the 1840s. Journal of Political Economy 96: 1142–1164.
Irwin, D.A. (1993). Free trade and protection in nineteenth-century Britain and France revisited: A comment on Nye. Journal of Economic History 51: 146–152.
Jones, R.W. (1971). A three-factor model in theory, trade, and history. In J. Bhagwati, R.W. Jones, R.A. Mundell and J. Vanek (Eds.), Trade, balance of payments and growth: Papers in international economics in honor of Charles P. Kindleberger. Amsterdam: North-Holland.
Keohane, R. (1984). After hegemony: Cooperation and discord in the world political economy. Princeton: New Jersey.
Kindleberger, C.P. (1975). The rise of free trade in western Europe, 1820–1875. Journal of Economic History 35: 20–55.
McCloskey, D.N. (1980). Magnanimous albion: Free trade and British national income, 1841–1881. Explorations in Economic History 17: 303–320.
Mercenier, J. and Yeldan, E. (1999). A plea for greater attention on the data in policy analysis. Journal of Policy Modeling 21: 851–873.
Nye, J.V. (1991). The myth of free-trade Britain and fortress France: Tariffs and trade in the nineteenth century. Journal of Economic History 51: 23–46.
Nye, J.V. (2004). War, wine, taxes. Manuscript in progress.
O’Rourke, K. (1997). Measuring protection: A cautionary tale. Journal of Development Economics 53: 169–183.
Samuelson, P. (1971). Ohlin was right. Swedish Journal of Economics 73: 365–384.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Dakhlia, S., Nye, J.V. Tax Britannica: Nineteenth Century Tariffs and British National Income. Public Choice 121, 309–333 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-004-1680-4
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-004-1680-4