Kevin H O''Rourke
Biographic Data
| ID | 1101322 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kevin H O''Rourke |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kevin H |
| FAMILY NAME | O''Rourke |
| SIGNATURE | ROURKE K H O |
| AFFILIATIONS | University College Dublin |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6272-2090 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 72 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 355 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 72 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1981 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Posttraumatic Growth in Self-Referred Healthcare Workers to the Trauma Response Network UK During Covid-19
Healthcare workers (HCWs) have experienced inordinate stress and trauma, especially since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. It has also been evident that HCWs have experienced posttraumatic growth (PTG), although the relationship between PTG and trauma symptoms is complex. This study aimed to examine PTG and its associations with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, dissociation, and resilience in HCWs (n = 62) who voluntarily soug…
Shocking Contrasts
Should history change the way we think about populism
This paper asks whether history should change the way in which economists and economic historians think about populism. We use Müller's definition, according to which populism is 'an exclusionary form of identity politics, which is why it poses a threat to democracy'. We make three historical arguments. First, late-nineteenth-century US Populists were not populist. Second, there is no necessary relationship between populism and anti-globalization…
The last free traders? Interwar trade policy in the Netherlands and Netherlands East Indies
There has still been too little detailed work on the protectionism that emerged in the wake of the Great Depression. In this paper we explore the experiences of two countries that have been largely neglected in the literature, the Netherlands and Netherlands East Indies (NEI). How did these traditionally free-trading economies respond to the Depression? We construct a detailed product-level database of tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade on t…
Should History Change the Way We Think About Populism
Deliberate Surrender? The Impact of Interwar Indian Protection
What is the role of trade policy in promoting intra-Empire trade? We address the question in the context of interwar India, whose trade policies have been accused of harming British export interests. We quantify the impact of trade policy on the value and composition of Indian imports, using novel disaggregated data on both trade policies and imports for 114 commodity categories coming from 42 countries. We find that, even though Indian protectio…
Capitalism and autocracy
The Smoot-Hawley Trade War
We document the outbreak of a trade war after the United States adopted the Smoot-Hawley tariff in June 1930. U.S. trade partners initially protested, with many eventually choosing to retaliate with tariffs. Using a new quarterly dataset on bilateral trade for ninety-nine countries, we show that U.S. exports to retaliators fell by 28%–32%. Using a second new dataset on U.S. exports at the product level, we find that the most important U.S. export…
An annual index of Irish industrial production, 1800–1913
We assemble the Irish industrial data currently available for the years 1800–1921, the period during which the entire island was in a political union with Great Britain, and construct an annual index of Irish industrial output for 1800–1913. We also construct a new industrial price index. Irish industrial output grew by an average of 1.3 per cent per annum between 1800 and the outbreak of the First World War. Industrial growth was slightly slower…
The Irish economy during the century after partition
This article provides a centennial overview of the Irish economy in the one hundred years following partition and independence. A comparative perspective allows us to distinguish between those aspects of Irish policies and performance that were unique to the country, and those which mirrored developments elsewhere. While Irish performance was typical in the long run, the country under-performed prior to the mid-1980s and over-performed for the re…
The World In 2021
The World In 2021 Kevin O’Rourke With the dawning of 2021 some of us are experiencing an emotion that has become unfamiliar recently: optimism. The four long years of the Trump presidency are over. Instead of a deeply troubled egotist incapable of empathy and devoid of humour, the most powerful nation in the West – if not necessarily the world – is going to have as president a competent, consensual politician and a manifestly decent man. Thanks t…
Four great Asian trade collapses
This paper introduces a new dataset of commodity‐specific, bilateral import data for four large Asian economies in the interwar period: China, the Dutch East Indies, India and Japan. It uses these data to describe the interwar trade collapses in the economies concerned. These resembled the post‐2008 Great Trade Collapse in some respects but not in others: they occurred along the intensive margin, imports of cars were particularly badly affected, …
Commodity frontiers
The history of frontiers is a fascinating topic for research, especially interdisciplinary research. We stress the need to engage with existing work on the topic by economists and economic historians, but we also highlight the need to engage with such topics as the history of inter-state conflict and violence, technological change, and the role of multiple interest groups in determining policy
The Smoot-Hawley Trade War
Coal and the European Industrial Revolution
To what extent did growth during the Industrial Revolution depend on coal? We answer the question using a panel of European city sizes between 1300 and 1900. Prior to 1750, there was no relationship between proximity to coalfields and growth; after 1750 cities closer to coalfields grew substantially faster than those further away. We instrument for coal proximity using proximity to Carboniferous-era rock strata
Economic History and Contemporary Challenges to Globalization
The article surveys three economic history literatures that can speak to contemporary challenges to globalization: the literature on the anti-globalization backlash of the nineteenth century, focused largely on trade and migration; the literature on the Great Depression, focused largely on capital flows, the gold standard, and protectionism; and the literature on trade and warfare
The Euro
Bored with Brexit? Tired of Trump? You can always distract yourself by worrying about the euro instead. This may not seem obvious right now: GDP (a measure of the economy's total output) in the Eurozone grew at 2.3 per cent in 2017, the same rate as in the United States, and significantly faster than in the UK. But this superficially impressive performance masks a dismal reality, and the underlying structural problems of the Eurozone remain as in…
The Meeting of the Waters
If you visit the National Library in Dublin, you will see stained-glass windows portraying the giants of European literature: Shakespeare, Cervantes, Dante ... and Moore. That would be Thomas Moore, whose ballad, ‘The Meeting of the Waters’, is the subject of this special issue. While you could be charitable and interpret Moore's inclusion as a nod, by the British establishment of the day, to Ireland's ‘national poet’, a modern reader may suspect…
Thoughts on Catalonia
I am writing in the aftermath of the violence that accompanied the recent referendum on Catalan independence. Like most Europeans, I am bemused by what appears to be an astonishing own goal by the Spanish government. Instead of allowing the referendum to go ahead, and either accepting the result, or ignoring it on the basis that it was illegitimate, it has handed Catalan nationalists a major public relations coup. We will have to wait and see wha…
Passions, interests, and Hobbits
‘What need you, being come to sense, but fumble in a greasy till’ I think it's fair to say that W.B. Yeats was not a fan of rational, calculating, economic man. And indeed, homo economicus tends to get a pretty bad press in general: even economists are giving him a hard time nowadays. Behavioural economics has convincingly shown us that human beings are not narrow-mindedly selfish in the way that first-year undergraduate textbooks typically assum…
Trade and violence
In the late summer of 344, a pagan rhetorician named Libanius delivered an oration. Four years previously, Constans had defeated a third brother, Constantine the Second, in Italy, and become sole ruler in the West. Constans would in his turn meet a violent end, but in 344 it seemed that peace had finally broken out inside the empire
Growth, Import Dependence, and War
Theories of war predict that the leader may launch a war on a follower who is catching up, since the follower cannot commit to not use their increased power in the future. But it was Japan who attacked the West in 1941: both leaders and followers start wars. Similarly, many have argued that trade makes war less likely, yet the First World War erupted at a time of unprecedented globalisation. We develop a model of trade and war that can explain bo…
Independent Ireland in Comparative Perspective
This article surveys independent Ireland's economic policies and performance. It has three main messages. First, the economic history of post-independence Ireland was not particularly unusual. Very often, things that were happening in Ireland were happening elsewhere as well. Second, for a long time, we were hampered by an excessive dependence on a poorly performing UK economy. And third, EC membership in 1973 and the single market programme of t…
The Davos lie
As I write these words, the great, the good and the self-important are trudging around in the Alpine slush, sporting their best parkas and a variety of silly hats, and opining about the state of the world. Davos is back. If there's one thing that people agree about in Davos, it's that globalisation is a Good Thing. And indeed, so it is, if the alternative is the autarky of the inter-war period. No one can deny that exporting has been the key to g…
Brentry
On 23 June, the UK voted to leave the European Union. The weeks since then have been surreal. The cliché of the moment is that ‘Brexit means Brexit’, which is by definition true but hardly very helpful. While the rest of Europe waits for decision-makers in London to decide what they want (their options are in fact rather limited), it is perhaps worthwhile reminding ourselves of why it was that the EU developed in a supranational rather than a pur…
The European Grain Invasion, 1870–1913
The article quantifies the impact of cheap grain on the European economy in the late nineteenth century. Falling transport costs led to dramatic declines in Anglo-American grain price gaps, but price convergence was less impressive between the U.S. and other European economies, and within Europe. Cheaper grain meant lower rents throughout Europe, and protection boosted rents, but the magnitudes involved differed between countries. Similarly, chea…
Globalization and History
Kevin O'Rourke and Jeffrey Williamson present a coherent picture of trade, migration, and international capital flows in the Atlantic economy in the century prior to 1914—the first great globalization boom, which anticipated the experience of the last fifty years. Globalization is not a new phenomenon, nor is it irreversible. In Gobalization and History, Kevin O'Rourke and Jeffrey Williamson present a coherent picture of trade, migration, and int…
Tariffs and Growth in the Late 19th Century
The paper estimates the correlation between tariffs and economic growth in the late 19th century, in the context of three types of growth equation: unconditional convergence equations; conditional convergence equations; and factor accumulation models. It does so for a panel of ten countries between 1875 and 1914. Tariffs were positively correlated with growth in these countries during this period
Culture, Conflict and Cooperation
A recent literature argues that 'hierarchical religions' such as Catholicism hamper the formation of trust, thus reducing the propensity to cooperate and damaging economic performance. This article looks for a link between Catholicism and the propensity to cooperate in the pre-1914 Irish dairy industry. Although the propensity to cooperate was higher in Denmark than in Ireland, and in Ulster than elsewhere in Ireland, Catholicism did not make coo…
The worldwide economic impact of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, 1793–1815
The paper provides a comparative history of the economic impact of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. By focusing on the relative price evidence, it is possible to show that the conflict had major economic effects around the world. Britain’s control of the seas meant that it was much less affected than other belligerent nations, such as France and the United States. The fact that this conflict had such large price effects around the world sug…
Democracy and International Trade
Journal Article Democracy and International Trade: Britain, France, and the United States, 1860-1990. Get access Democracy and International Trade: Britain, France, and the United States, 1860-1990. By Verdier (Daniel). (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994. Pp. xx + 387. £35.00 hardback, US $45.00 hardback. ISBN 0 691 03224 6.) Kevin O'Rourke Kevin O'Rourke University College, Dublin Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Ac…
Late Nineteenth-Century Anglo-American Factor-Price Convergence
Due primarily to transport improvements, commodity prices in Britain and the United States tended to converge between 1870 and 1913. Heckscher and Ohlin, writing in 1919 and 1924, thought that these events should have contributed to factor-price convergence. It turns out that Heckscher and Ohlin were right: a significant share of the Anglo-American real-wage convergence was due to commodity-price convergence. It appears that this late nineteenth-…
Political Extremism in the 1920s and 1930s
We examine the impact of the Great Depression on the share of votes for right-wing extremists in elections in the 1920s and 1930s. We confirm the existence of a link between political extremism and economic hard times as captured by growth or contraction of the economy. What mattered was not simply growth at the time of the election, but cumulative growth performance. The impact was greatest in countries with relatively short histories of democra…
After Columbus
This study documents the boom in Europe's imports from Asia and the Americas between 1500 and 1800 and explores its causes. There was no commodity-price convergence between continents, suggesting that declining trade barriers were not the cause of the boom. Thus, it must have been caused by some combination of European import demand and foreign export supply. The behavior of the relative price of foreign importables in European cities should tell…
Emigration and living standards in Ireland since the Famine
Independent Ireland in Comparative Perspective
This article surveys independent Ireland's economic policies and performance. It has three main messages. First, the economic history of post-independence Ireland was not particularly unusual. Very often, things that were happening in Ireland were happening elsewhere as well. Second, for a long time, we were hampered by an excessive dependence on a poorly performing UK economy. And third, EC membership in 1973 and the single market programme of t…
Incentives, technology and the shift to year-round dairying in late nineteenth-century Denmark1
This article uses monthly trade data to document the decline in the seasonality in Danish butter exports that occurred from the 1880s onwards. This decline contrasted with steady or increasing seasonality elsewhere. Monthly butter prices in Britain, Denmark, and Ireland show that the incentives to shift into winter dairying were particularly high in the 1880s and 1890s; however, this cannot on its own explain the Danish shift, since our price dat…
Coal and the European Industrial Revolution
To what extent did growth during the Industrial Revolution depend on coal? We answer the question using a panel of European city sizes between 1300 and 1900. Prior to 1750, there was no relationship between proximity to coalfields and growth; after 1750 cities closer to coalfields grew substantially faster than those further away. We instrument for coal proximity using proximity to Carboniferous-era rock strata
Economic History and Contemporary Challenges to Globalization
The article surveys three economic history literatures that can speak to contemporary challenges to globalization: the literature on the anti-globalization backlash of the nineteenth century, focused largely on trade and migration; the literature on the Great Depression, focused largely on capital flows, the gold standard, and protectionism; and the literature on trade and warfare
Burn Everything British but their Coal
The Anglo-Irish Economic War of 1932 to 1938 was eventually settled on terms highly favorable to the Irish. This article uses a computational general equilibrium model of the interwar Irish economy to argue that the welfare costs of the war were not so great as has been thought, and that the dispute helped de Valera electorally. These considerations help explain the eventual Irish “victory” in the Economic War
Did Vasco da Gama matter for European markets? 1
This article explores the impact of the ‘Voyages of Discovery’ on European spice markets, asking whether the exploits of Vasco da Gama and others brought European and Asian spice markets closer together. To this end we compare trends in pepper and fine spice prices before and after 1503, the year when da Gama returned from his financially successful second voyage. Other authors have examined trends in nominal spice prices, but this article uses r…
The Irish economy during the century after partition
This article provides a centennial overview of the Irish economy in the one hundred years following partition and independence. A comparative perspective allows us to distinguish between those aspects of Irish policies and performance that were unique to the country, and those which mirrored developments elsewhere. While Irish performance was typical in the long run, the country under-performed prior to the mid-1980s and over-performed for the re…
Monetary Data and Proxy GDP Estimates
The paper collects the available Irish banking statistics from 1840 to 1921, and uses these to speculate about trends in living standards during the period. In particular, it estimates a velocity function for five countries using annual data from 1876 to 1913. It then uses this function to estimate Irish velocity, and hence Irish GDP, between 1864 and 1913
Growth, Import Dependence, and War
Theories of war predict that the leader may launch a war on a follower who is catching up, since the follower cannot commit to not use their increased power in the future. But it was Japan who attacked the West in 1941: both leaders and followers start wars. Similarly, many have argued that trade makes war less likely, yet the First World War erupted at a time of unprecedented globalisation. We develop a model of trade and war that can explain bo…
Rural depopulation in a small open economy
The Smoot-Hawley Trade War
We document the outbreak of a trade war after the United States adopted the Smoot-Hawley tariff in June 1930. U.S. trade partners initially protested, with many eventually choosing to retaliate with tariffs. Using a new quarterly dataset on bilateral trade for ninety-nine countries, we show that U.S. exports to retaliators fell by 28%–32%. Using a second new dataset on U.S. exports at the product level, we find that the most important U.S. export…
Measuring protection
The Repeal of the Corn Laws and Irish Emigration
Should history change the way we think about populism
This paper asks whether history should change the way in which economists and economic historians think about populism. We use Müller's definition, according to which populism is 'an exclusionary form of identity politics, which is why it poses a threat to democracy'. We make three historical arguments. First, late-nineteenth-century US Populists were not populist. Second, there is no necessary relationship between populism and anti-globalization…
The last free traders? Interwar trade policy in the Netherlands and Netherlands East Indies
There has still been too little detailed work on the protectionism that emerged in the wake of the Great Depression. In this paper we explore the experiences of two countries that have been largely neglected in the literature, the Netherlands and Netherlands East Indies (NEI). How did these traditionally free-trading economies respond to the Depression? We construct a detailed product-level database of tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade on t…
The Philosophy of Life of Cho Pyŏnghwa
The purpose of this article is to elucidate the philosophy underlying the poetic world of Cho Pyŏnghwa (born 1921). Cho Pyŏnghwa's view of life is based on the premise that life and death are one continuous process, and that time is unchanging and eternal. However, there is a conflict between time in the abstract and individual moments of real time. This conflict leads the poet to an over-whelming awareness of life as a transitory state. Accordin…
Nourishing Defective Newborns
F. Klein, Aug., p. 46 (response to Malady: A New Treatment of Disease by K. Danner Clouser, Charles M. Culver, and Bernard Gert, June 1981, pp. 29-37); reply by the authors, p. 46 Medical Ethics and Moral Philosophy (C), Benjamin Freedman, Dec., p. 44 (response to Does Medical Ethics Have Its Own Theory? (R) by Wayne Sumner, Aug., pp. 38-39); reply by Sumner, p. 44 On and Sex Change, (C) William K. Frankena, April, p. 46 (response to Marriage, Mo…
Agricultural Change and Rural Depopulation Ireland 1845–1876
Agricultural Change and Rural Depopulation
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Rural depopulation in a small open economy
Burn Everything British but their Coal
The Anglo-Irish Economic War of 1932 to 1938 was eventually settled on terms highly favorable to the Irish. This article uses a computational general equilibrium model of the interwar Irish economy to argue that the welfare costs of the war were not so great as has been thought, and that the dispute helped de Valera electorally. These considerations help explain the eventual Irish “victory” in the Economic War
Late Nineteenth-Century Anglo-American Factor-Price Convergence
Due primarily to transport improvements, commodity prices in Britain and the United States tended to converge between 1870 and 1913. Heckscher and Ohlin, writing in 1919 and 1924, thought that these events should have contributed to factor-price convergence. It turns out that Heckscher and Ohlin were right: a significant share of the Anglo-American real-wage convergence was due to commodity-price convergence. It appears that this late nineteenth-…
The Repeal of the Corn Laws and Irish Emigration
Property Transactions in Ireland, 1708-1988
Education, globalization and catch-up
In a previous paper in this Review, we argued that the vast majority of Sweden's spectacular catch-up on the late nineteenth century leaders was due to what today would be called globalization forces. Sweden's catch-up on Britain and the United States between 1870 and World War 1 was due mostly to mass migration. international capital flows and trade. This paper asks two additional questions. First, how important was schooling to this performance…
Democracy and International Trade
Journal Article Democracy and International Trade: Britain, France, and the United States, 1860-1990. Get access Democracy and International Trade: Britain, France, and the United States, 1860-1990. By Verdier (Daniel). (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994. Pp. xx + 387. £35.00 hardback, US $45.00 hardback. ISBN 0 691 03224 6.) Kevin O'Rourke Kevin O'Rourke University College, Dublin Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Ac…
Emigration and living standards in Ireland since the Famine
Reply to Ljungberg
We are grateful to Jonas Ljungberg for his courteous and informative response to our pair of articles recently published in this Review.1 We will argue that Ljungberg has misunderstood our intention on one central point. Since other readers may share this misunderstanding, we are happy to set the record straight. We also take this opportunity to stress a second central point which characterizes our work in this Review
Measuring protection
The European Grain Invasion, 1870–1913
The article quantifies the impact of cheap grain on the European economy in the late nineteenth century. Falling transport costs led to dramatic declines in Anglo-American grain price gaps, but price convergence was less impressive between the U.S. and other European economies, and within Europe. Cheaper grain meant lower rents throughout Europe, and protection boosted rents, but the magnitudes involved differed between countries. Similarly, chea…
Euthanasia Examined
Culture, Malthus, and Irish Demographic History
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Monetary Data and Proxy GDP Estimates
The paper collects the available Irish banking statistics from 1840 to 1921, and uses these to speculate about trends in living standards during the period. In particular, it estimates a velocity function for five countries using annual data from 1876 to 1913. It then uses this function to estimate Irish velocity, and hence Irish GDP, between 1864 and 1913
Globalization and History
Kevin O'Rourke and Jeffrey Williamson present a coherent picture of trade, migration, and international capital flows in the Atlantic economy in the century prior to 1914—the first great globalization boom, which anticipated the experience of the last fifty years. Globalization is not a new phenomenon, nor is it irreversible. In Gobalization and History, Kevin O'Rourke and Jeffrey Williamson present a coherent picture of trade, migration, and int…
Tariffs and Growth in the Late 19th Century
The paper estimates the correlation between tariffs and economic growth in the late 19th century, in the context of three types of growth equation: unconditional convergence equations; conditional convergence equations; and factor accumulation models. It does so for a panel of ten countries between 1875 and 1914. Tariffs were positively correlated with growth in these countries during this period
The Determinants of Individual Trade Policy Preferences
What determines trade policy? While this may seem to be mainly a question for political scientists, it is of increasing concern to international trade theorists, faced with the obvious disjunction between the free trade prescriptions of standard trade models and the protectionist policies pursued by so many governments. 1 The intellectual stakes for economists have increased further with the advent of endogenous growth models, which predict that …
When did globalisation begin?
Some world historians attach globalisation ‘big bang’ significance to 1492 and 1498. Such scholars are on the side of Adam Smith who believed that these were the two most important events in recorded history. Other world historians insist that globalisation stretches back even earlier. There is a third view which argues that the world economy was fragmented and completely de-globalised before the early nineteenth century. None of these three comp…
The Book of Korean Shijo
The Korean genre known as shijo is short song lyrics. Originally meant to be sung rather than recited, these short poems are light, personal, and very often conversational. The language is simple, direct, and devoid of elaboration or ornamentation. The shijo poet gives a firsthand account of his personal experience of life and emotion: the rise and fall of dynasties, friendship, love, parting, the pleasures of wine, the beauty and transience of l…
After Columbus
This study documents the boom in Europe's imports from Asia and the Americas between 1500 and 1800 and explores its causes. There was no commodity-price convergence between continents, suggesting that declining trade barriers were not the cause of the boom. Thus, it must have been caused by some combination of European import demand and foreign export supply. The behavior of the relative price of foreign importables in European cities should tell…
Heckscher-Ohlin Theory and Individual Attitudes Towards Globalization
Economics (45 works) · Political science (40 works) · Law (28 works) · Geography (21 works) · History (19 works) · Market economy (19 works) · Historical Economic and Social Studies (18 works) · Politics (16 works) · International trade (14 works) · Economy (13 works)