When did overseas trade start to matter for living standards? Traditional real-wage indices suggest that living standards in Europe stagnated before 1800. In this paper, we argue that welfare may have actually risen substantially, but surreptitiously, because of an influx of new goods. Colonial “luxuries” such as tea, coffee, and sugar became highly coveted. Together with more simple household staples such as potatoes and tomatoes, overseas goods transformed European diets after the discovery of America and the rounding of the Cape of Good Hope. They became household items in many countries by the end of the 18^th century. We apply two standard methods to calculate broad orders of magnitude of the resulting welfare gains. While they cannot be assessed precisely, gains from greater variety may well have been big enough to boost European real incomes by 10% or more (depending on the assumptions used).

海外贸易什么时候开始影响生活水平？传统的实际工资指数表明，欧洲的生活水平在 1800 年之前停滞不前。在本文中，我们认为，由于新商品的涌入，福利可能实际上已经大幅上升，但偷偷摸摸地上升了。茶、咖啡和糖等殖民地“奢侈品”变得非常令人垂涎。在发现美洲和绕过好望角之后，海外商品与土豆和西红柿等更简单的家庭主食一起改变了欧洲人的饮食。^{到 18世纪末}，它们已成为许多国家的家庭用品世纪。我们采用两种标准方法来计算由此产生的福利收益的广泛数量级。虽然无法对其进行精确评估，但更多种类带来的收益可能足以将欧洲的实际收入提高 10% 或更多（取决于所使用的假设）。