Trade and the Great Divergence: The Family Connection
认为工业革命第二阶段国际贸易的扩张通过影响各国人口转型时机，导致非工业国将贸易收益用于人口增长而非教育投资，从而加剧了全球收入水平的“大分流”。
The last two centuries have been characterized by dramatic changes in the distribution of income and population across the globe. While Western European economies have tripled their domination in terms of income per capita over Asian economies, significant resources in Asian countries have been channeled into to doubling their lead over Western Europe in the population dimension. This research argues that the rapid expansion of international trade in the second phase of the industrial revolution has played a major role in the timing of demographic transitions across countries and has thereby been a significant determinant of the distribution of world population and a prime cause of the ‘Great Divergence ’ in income levels across countries in the last two centuries. The analysis suggests that international trade had an asymmetrical effect on the evolution of industrial and non-industrial economies. While in the industrial nations the gains from trade were directed primarily towards investment in education and growth in output per capita, a significant portion of the gains from trade in non-industrial nations was channeled towards population growth. In the second phase of the Industrial Revolution, international trade enhanced the spe-cialization of industrial economies in the production of industrial, skilled intensive, goods. The associated rise in the demand for skilled labor induced an investment in the quality of the population, expediting a demographic transition, stimulating technological progress and fur-ther enhancing the comparative advantage of these industrial economies in the production of skilled intensive goods. In non-industrial economies, in contrast, international trade generated an incentive to specialize in the production of unskilled intensive, non-industrial, goods. The