The flow of goods and capital across borders and between nations has featured in human storytelling and economic relations since the beginning of time. The biblical protagonists traveled and traded with each other, and often fought over the dominion of resources. The protagonists in modern historical tales of trade and war since the turn of the millennium continue the habit in similar ways. You would be hard-pressed to find a better historical account of that than in Ronald Findlay and Kevin H. O’Rourke’s Power and Plenty. The book is as much about the wars that divided empires and nations as it is about the exchange of goods and capital that bound them together, though it is reasonable to say that these two perspectives are joined at the hip. Economics plays a specific role in the study of global trade and empire-building. The exchange of goods, capital, and services across borders gives rise to transactions as the ownership of resources shifts. Over time, these processes lead to the accumulation of wealth and debt on the part of nations and economic actors—assets and liabilities, in the jargon of modern finance. It is the economist’s job to trace, identify, and record the nature and value of these transactions.
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