Wolfgang Keller

About

Wolfgang Keller is a Professor and Director of the McGuire Center at the University of Colorado Boulder, specializing in international trade and investment, economic development, technological change, productivity, and economic history. He holds a PhD in Economics from Yale University and a Diploma in Economics from the University of Freiburg. Keller is recognized as one of the leading experts on the international diffusion of technological knowledge. His recent research, funded by the National Science Foundation, focuses on comparative development in China and Europe. Keller has served as a resident scholar at the IMF's Research Department and as an advisor at the World Bank, where he is currently working on a project that examines the microstructure of foreign direct investment. He is affiliated with the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Centre for Economic Policy Research. His research has been published in prominent journals such as the American Economic Review and the Journal of Political Economy.

Research topics

• Economics
• Ancient history
• Political Science
• History
• Economic history
• Law
• Economy
• Geography
• International trade
• Labour economics

Selected publications

• Knowledge Spillovers, Trade, and FDI

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2021-04-01 · 38 citations

  reportOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This paper studies knowledge spillovers, positive externalities that augment the information set of an economic agent, and reviews the evidence on such spillovers in the context of international economic transactions. The entry discusses trade channels of knowledge transfer associated with purchases from abroad (imports) and sales to abroad (exports). Another focus is on the foreign direct investment (FDI) channel through purchases from abroad (inward FDI) and sales to abroad (outward FDI). The…

  PublisherDOI

• The Economic Consequences of the Opium War

  2021 · 20 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  This paper employs new data to study the impact of Western colonial institutions on China's economy during the 19th century. It is shown that trade and legal institutions in the treaty port areas accelerated industrialization and increased capital market efficiency. The former was driven by technology transfer and market access gains at the ports, while the latter was due to increased security through extraterritorial legal rule at the consular courts. Furthermore, a geographic spillover analysi…

  PublisherDOI

• China’s Foreign Trade and Investment, 1800-1950

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2020-07-01 · 9 citations

  reportOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  The First Opium War (1840-42) was a watershed in the history of China. In its aftermath Britain and other countries forced open new ports to foreign trade through international treaties. Chinese institutions of trade were abolished and re-organized under Western management, Western legal institutions were introduced in China in form of courts and legal practices, and foreigners in China were tried according to the laws of their country of origin (extraterritoriality). To better understand the im…

  PublisherDOI

• International Transactions: Real Trade and Factor Flows between 1700 and 1870

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2020-03-01 · 5 citations

  reportOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This paper describes broad regional and temporal trends in the evolution of international trade and international factor flows between 1700 and 1870, including key differences in trade costs across space and time. We find trade links in Western Europe and the European colonies of North America intensified at the same time these regions experienced the initial industrial revolution and the spread of industrialization, which led to sustained economic growth. At the same time, global differences in…

  PublisherDOI

• Marriage Matching over Five Centuries in China

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2022-11-01 · 4 citations

  reportOpen accessSenior author

  In the marriage market, families make investments on behalf of their young so that they are able to form a household with their preferred partner. We analyze marriage markets in a central region of China between about 1300 and 1850 through the lens of a model of marriage matching and intergenerational transmission of inequality. For both female and male children, marriage patterns are far from being random, instead, there is positive assortative matching. This is present for the entire income di…

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Trading, institutions, product innovation and entrepreneurship

  NSF · $685k · 2011–2017

• What Explains Modern Economic Growth? New Evidence from a Comparison of China and Europe in the 18th Century

  NSF · $266k · 2005–2013

Frequent coauthors

• Carol H. Shiue

  160 shared

• Stephen Yeaple

  66 shared

• Hâle Utar

  Grinnell College

  53 shared

• Ram N. Acharya

  New Mexico State University

  25 shared

• Larry D. Qiu

  22 shared

• Kun Jiang

  19 shared

• Ben Li

  China Animal Disease Control Center

  19 shared

• William Ridley

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  19 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Economics

  Yale University

  1995

• Other, Economics

  University of Freiburg

Similar researchers at University of Colorado Boulder

• Miles Spencer Kimballh-45
• Yongmin Chenh-39
• Murat Iyigunh-29