Temporary Protection and Technology Adoption: Evidence from the Napoleonic Blockade
利用拿破仑战争期间法国帝国不同地区受英国贸易封锁影响程度的外生差异，研究发现临时贸易保护促进了机械化棉纺能力的提升，并在长期内提高了工业人均增加值，但该效应在19世纪下半叶后消失。
This paper uses a natural experiment to estimate the causal effect of temporary trade protection on long-term economic development. I find that regions in the French Empire which became better protected from trade with the British for exogenous reasons during the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) increased capacity in mechanized cotton spinning to a larger extent than regions which remained more exposed to trade. In the long run, regions with exogenously higher spinning capacity had higher activity in mechanized cotton spinning. They also had higher value added per capita in industry up to the second half of the nineteenth century, but not later.