The drivers of Italian exports and product market entry: 1862-1913 (Updated: August 2020)
Series: Working Papers. 1836.
Author: Jacopo Timini.
Published in: European Review of Economic History. Volume 25, Issue 3, Aug 2021, pp 513-548
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Abstract
Between its Unification and WWI, Italy’s changing export composition echoed its economic
transformation. In this paper I decompose Italian export growth in its margins, and then
analyse the determinants of Italian exports and product market entry (and exit). To do
so, I use two different databases (aggregate and product-level bilateral trade data) and
methodologies (gravity and logit models). Besides confirming some well-known empirical
and historical facts for the Italian case (gravity variables hold; trade follows a Heckscher-
Olhin pattern), the regression results offer a new perspective on two distinctive features of
its history: trade policy and emigration. These two factors are positively associated with
Italian exports and product market entry. These findings also have additional implications
for the role of emigration on the course of the Italian economy: accounting for the trade
channel, its overall effect may be larger than previously thought.