Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

The purpose of this work is to evaluate the causal effect of the Network of the Cobden-Chevalier Treaties including the Most Favoured Nation (MFN) clause on trade flows of countries in the second half of the 19th century. This paper contributes to the literature on the topic in several ways. First, it applies up-to-date quantitative methods (i.e., nonparametric matching technique) to the study of historical phenomena. These methods permit to estimate the average MFN effect (the ``treatment") on the treated group of countries in terms of bilateral trade flows (the ``outcome"), rebalancing the control group without imposing any functional relationship …