Isabella Weber

2021-22 Scholars Project Title: Export Diversification Across Two Globalizations: A Network Analysis (Co-Scholar Maryclare Griffin)

A long-standing insight in development economics is that higher levels of diversification, are closely linked to higher levels of growth and prosperity. Yet, due to data limitations we know little about how countries’ export diversification evolves in the very long-run. Isabella Weber, Assistant Professor of Economics, and collaborators have constructed the first, global database of commodity-level exports for the previous globalization that ended with World War I (https://www.rebuildingmacroeconomics.ac.uk/driving-specialisation). Their analysis establishes strong persistence in export diversification. As ISSR scholars, we propose to develop new statistical tools needed to investigate how in the context of this overall persistence in the country ranking, the global network of exports and the position of countries therein has changed over time.