Eighteenth-century international trade statistics. Sources and methods

Loïc Charles (1) , Guillaume Daudin (2)

1 INED - Institut national d'études démographiques
2 OFCE - Observatoire français des conjonctures économiques (Sciences Po)

Trade statistics provide unique sets of data on early modern economies.They can help explore their economic geography. They are of interest for econ-omists interested in economic development and early globalization. They are crucial to understand the Industrial Revolution. Still, they have been under-utilized by economists and economic historians alike. This volume gives adetailed overview on the existing quantitative sources on European trade data, focusing on the eighteenth century. In the introduction we discuss the histo-riography of the use of early trade statistics in economic history and we present two recent projects conducted in France in this area: TOFLIT18 and RICardo. The volume includes twenty-three short essays that present the sources of Euro-pean early trade statistics. Seven additional papers discuss the methodologicalissues of using early trade statistics and illustrate how these statistics can be mobilized to produce new insights on European economic history.

Keywords: Administrative history; Eighteen century; International trade statistics; Europpe; Globalization; Economie History

Domains: Humanities and Social Sciences; Economics and Finance

Loïc Charles, Guillaume Daudin. Eighteenth-century international trade statistics. Sources and methods. Loïc Charles; Guillaume Daudin. Revue de l'OFCE, 140, OFCE, pp.397, 2015, Eighteenth-century international trade statistics. Sources and methods, 978-2-312-03378-5. ⟨hal-03459773⟩