The Economics of the Frontier

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiv

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2. Introduction: Frontiers and Empires

   • Ronald Findlay, Mats Lundahl

   Pages 1-26

3. Frontiers and Empires in Historical Perspective

   • Ronald Findlay, Mats Lundahl

   Pages 27-94

4. Modeling Global Interdependence: Centers, Peripheries and Frontiers

   • Ronald Findlay, Mats Lundahl

   Pages 95-104

5. Towards a Model of Territorial Expansion and the Limits of Empire

   • Ronald Findlay, Mats Lundahl

   Pages 105-124

6. Demographic Shocks and the Factor Proportions Model: From the Plague of Justinian to the Black Death

   • Ronald Findlay, Mats Lundahl

   Pages 125-172

7. The First Globalization Episode: The Creation of the Mongol Empire, or the Economics of Chinggis Khan

   • Ronald Findlay, Mats Lundahl

   Pages 173-221

8. Towards a Factor Proportions Approach to Economic History: Population, Precious Metals and Prices from the Black Death to the Price Revolution

   • Ronald Findlay, Mats Lundahl

   Pages 223-260

9. International Trade and Factor Mobility with an Endogenous Land Frontier: Some General Equilibrium Implications of Christopher Columbus

   • Ronald Findlay, Mats Lundahl

   Pages 261-281

10. Natural Resources, ‘Vent-for-Surplus’ and the Staples Theory

    • Ronald Findlay, Mats Lundahl

    Pages 283-314

11. Resource-Led Growth—A Long-Term Perspective: The Relevance of the 1870–1914 Experience for Today’s Developing Economies

    • Ronald Findlay, Mats Lundahl

    Pages 315-366

12. Lampião and the Colonels: On the Political Economy of Banditry

    • Ronald Findlay, Mats Lundahl

    Pages 367-415

13. Back Matter

    Pages 417-448

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This book deals with the economics of establishing a frontier by conquest or by peaceful settlement, the costs involved, and the optimum extension of the territory. The opening chapters discuss the most relevant literature about frontiers – conceptual, theoretical and empirical – and introduce the fundamental theoretical model for extending frontiers which is drawn on throughout the book. The authors use this theoretical apparatus by applying it to a number of historical cases. These include the division of the European territory between the Byzantine Empire, Islam and Western Europe, the creation and expansion of the Mongol Empire, the impact of the Black Death, the European discovery of the New World, the staples trade from 1870–1914, and the rise and fall of banditry in Brazil.

The Economics of the Frontier brings together a collection of essays which explore how economically optimal frontiers were founded from sixth-century Europe through to twentieth-century Brazil.

• Territorial expansion
• Economic history
• Cultivation
• Peaceful settlement
• European territory
• Black Death
• Banditry
• economics
• history

• Department of Economics, Columbia University , New York, USA

  Ronald Findlay

• Department of Economics, Stockholm School of Economics and Institute of Latin American Studies Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

  Mats Lundahl

Ronald Findlay is Ragnar Nurkse Professor Emeritus of Economics at Columbia University, USA. His main research fields are international economics, development economics, economic history, and economic theory.
Mats Lundahl is Professor Emeritus of Development Economics at the Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden. His main research fields are development economics, international economics, economic history, history of economic doctrines, and agricultural economics.

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