The paper “Spending a Windfall: American Precious Metals and Euro-Asian Trade 1531-1810”, by André C. Silva and myself, is now available as a GGDC working paper.
Here’s the abstract:
During the early modern period, Asia ran a large current account surplus with Europe. We show that the critical factor to stimulate Euro-Asian trade was not the new trading routes to Asia, but the European access to American precious metals. We use a dynamic general equilibrium model to reproduce historical data and calculate alternative scenarios. We find that European imports of Asian goods were up to thirteen times higher than they would have been without new routes and without precious metals. The effect of American precious metals is six times larger than that of the discoveries of new trading routes.
90% of the European imports of porcelain, silk, tea, and other luxuries from Asia during the early modern period were paid for…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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