Abstract
“If measuring protection is difficult, trying to quantify its impact is positively treacherous and is not broached in this paper.” With this opening remark, Forrest Capie may disappoint many economists who expect just this from an economic historian. It would have been helpful if he would have explained why he thinks such an exercise would be “treacherous”. After all some scholars have tried to measure or at least to estimate the impact of customs duties. Since the 1970ies there has been a lively discussion on the impact of tariffs mainly in the Explorations in Economic History and The Journal of Economic History. DAVID (1970) criticized the approach of the “Old Economic History”, represented by TAUSSIG’s classical Tariff History of the United States (1888, 8th ed. 1931) concerning tariff impact on the Ante-Bellum United States Cotton Industry. A few years later ENGERMAN (1971) and then BAACK and RAY (1973) reconsidered the impact of tariffs on the American and British iron and steel industry.
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References
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Fischer, W. (1996). Comments on: Protectionism in Europe before 1939. In: Tilly, R., Welfens, P.J.J. (eds) European Economic Integration as a Challenge to Industry and Government. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-80014-6_9
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