The structure and dynamic of Germany's foreign trade 1880 to 1912

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Between 1880 and 1912 the German Empire emerged as the leading industrial nation of Europe with a focus in machinery, vehicles, and electro-technical goods among others. These sectors characterize the German economy still today. Simultaneously, the German economy became integrated with its European and global trading partners to an unprecedented degree. At the core of our research proposal is the specialization dynamic of Germanys foreign trade, that is changes in both the structure of commodity groups and trading partners over time. Based on a novel dataset, which encompasses all dimensions of German foreign trade, we analyze the structural change in trade and Germanys rise to the largest industrial exporter of the continent. Our research hypothesis states that the emergence of the German Empire as the industrial core of Europe was not determined by domestic factors alone, but crucially and causally affected by her interaction with specific trading partners. To this end we use econometric methods to test for the impact of external (foreign trade) factors on Germanys specialization dynamics; moreover we complement this approach with historical case studies on specific industries to assess the plausibility of the underlying theoretical assumptions and findings on aggregate economic developments.