Integration in European coal markets, 1833–1913†

This article analyses coal market integration in Europe over the long nineteenth century. The market integration of coal, a key commodity associated with the industrial revolution, is an aspect of European economic history that has received little attention. The literature on the evolution of markets has concentrated on agricultural products, mostly cereals. This article examines intra- and international market integration in the principal coal-producing countries, Britain, Germany, France, and Belgium; and adds three main consuming southern European countries to the analysis of the international market. It provides new evidence on prices, as well as trade, and uses a straightforward approach to address coal price behaviour. Despite shocks, clear trends toward integration in both domestic and international markets can be observed, even if by one of our measures the latter started at a later date. Processes of market integration, however, seemed to slow from the end of the nineteenth century. Explanations are offered as to the causes of the extent and timing of integrations: reductions, mainly, in transportation costs, but also in information costs, and, in the international market, protectionism. The influence of cartels, on the other hand, may have been limited, particularly in the international market.     

Feeding the British: convergence and market efficiency in the nineteenth-century grain trade

This paper traces the evolution of the international market for wheat, from an emerging market structure after the repeal of the corn laws to a mature market characterized by efficient arbitrage after the introduction of the transatlantic telegraph and the growth of trade. Efficiency is documented using traditional price gap accounting as well as error correction modelling. Markets which traded directly with each other as well as markets which did not trade with each other were integrated. The traditional bilateral focus in market integration studies has been extended to a multivariate approach, which generates new insights into the pattern of diffusion of price shocks in the international economy. Shocks in the major importing nation, Britain, dominated in the emerging market phase, while shocks in the major exporting economy, the United States, dominated international price movements at the end of the nineteenth century.     

A Comparison of Market Integration in Nineteenth‐Century China and Japan

This paper performs a cointegration analysis using an Error Correction Model (ECM) on annual rice prices to measure and compare market integration in China and Japan during the nineteenth century. We find markets in Japan were more integrated than in China at both the regional and national levels during the period. Moreover, market integration in Japan improved during industrialisation. These findings support the view that a well‐integrated market is a cause as well as a result of economic growth.     

Political risk and the international bond market between the 1848 revolution and the outbreak of the First World War1

This article uses price data and editorial commentaries from the contemporary financial press to measure the impact of political events on investors’ expectations from the middle of the nineteenth century until the First World War. The main question addressed is why political events appeared to affect the world's biggest financial market, the London bond market, much less between 1881 and 1914 than they had between 1843 and 1880. In particular, I ask why the outbreak of the First World War, an event traditionally seen as having been heralded by a series of international crises, was not apparently anticipated by investors. The article considers how far the declining sensitivity of the bond market to political events was a result of the spread of the gold standard, increased international financial integration, or changes in the fiscal policies of the great powers. I suggest that the increasing national separation of bond markets offers a better explanation. However, even this structural change cannot explain why the London market was so slow to appreciate the risk of war in 1914. To investors, the First World War truly came as a bolt from the blue.     

National and international market integration in the 19th century: Evidence from comovement

This paper analyzes relative wheat price fluctuations to investigate market integration among 72 European and US cities. Applying a Dynamic Factor Model, which has seldom been used in market integration analysis, prices are decomposed into international, national and local components. Thus, national and international market integration are identified by a statistical restriction, and results for each single market are obtained. The first result is that globalization has accelerated faster in the first than in the second half of the 19th century, putting the post-1850 transport revolution into perspective. The USA integrated only later into the European market, discounting the role of the “grain invasion” for trade history. I also show that the European nations that turned protectionist after 1880 reduced the impact of foreign shocks, while free traders fully integrated into the international economy.     

Urban Development in the United States, 1690-1990

The United States transformed itself from a rural to an urban society over the last three centuries. After a century of unremarkable growth, the pace of urbanization was historically unprecedented between the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. In the twentieth century, the urban population continued to increase but in a much more dispersed manner as the suburban population increased. Throughout these developments, cities also exhibited considerable variation in their population sizes. This paper finds that the pace and pattern of U.S. urban development are explained by changes in regional comparative advantage and in economies in transportation and local public goods, which in turn were determined by the changes in the economic structures of cities. This paper also finds that cities varied considerably in size because the larger cities reduced market transaction costs associated with coordinating greater geographic division of labor.     

One world money, then and now

The case for monetary simplification and unification has been made since the middle of the nineteenth century. It rests on four principal arguments; reduced transaction costs; establishing credibility; preventing bad policy in other states; political integration via money. In this paper we argue that the case for monetary integration is becoming increasingly less persuasive. In making our case we posit a different concept of money to the one that underlay the nineteenth century discussions which we term “Newtonian” since it was based on the assumption of a single reference external to the state reflected in the definition of value in terms of precious metals. In the twentieth century, views of money have shifted to a more “Einsteinian” or relativistic conception. Measures of value that move relative to each other are helpful in terms of dealing with large shifts in relative prices that affect different countries very differently. In the current age of globalization, “Einsteinian” money is capable of accommodating shifts that were politically destructive in the “Newtonian” world.     

Economic nationalism and economic integration: the Austro‐Hungarian Empire in the late nineteenth century 1

This article seeks to square two seemingly contradictory strands in the literature on economic development in the late nineteenth‐century Habsburg Empire. On the one hand, there is an extensive historiography stressing the rise of nationalism and its close correlate of growing efforts to organize economic life along ethno‐linguistic lines. On the other, there is a substantial body of research that emphasizes significant improvements in market integration across the empire as an outcome of the diffusion of industrialization and an expanding railway network, among other factors. In this article, it is argued that the process of market integration was systematically asymmetric, shaped by intensifying intra‐empire nationality conflicts. While grain markets in Austria‐Hungary became overall more integrated over time, they also became systematically biased: regions with a similar ethno‐linguistic composition of their population came to display significantly smaller price gaps between each other than regions with different compositions. The emergence and persistence of this differential integration cannot be explained by changes in infrastructure and transport costs, simple geographical features, asymmetric integration with neighbouring regions abroad, or communication problems. Instead, differential market integration along ethno‐linguistic lines was driven by the formation of ethno‐linguistic networks due to intensifying conflict between groups—economic nationalism mattered.     

The Paris financial market in the nineteenth century: complementarities and competition in microstructures1

This article sets out to explain why the Paris Bourse was highly successful in the nineteenth century in spite of the supposedly inefficient monopoly of the official market, the Parquet. The literature argues that the official monopoly was sidelined by a free, innovative market known as the Coulisse, but it fails to explain how the Coulisse emerged despite the monopoly and how the two markets persisted alongside each other during the entire century. We provide a detailed history of how these two markets emerged and interacted. The Parquet increasingly developed as a high‐end market, providing security, transparency, and effective settlement‐delivery to unsophisticated investors trading on the spot market. The Coulisse provided liquidity, immediacy, and opacity to professional investors trading mostly forward. In line with recent theoretical developments, we argue that the juxtaposition of heterogeneous organizations had important virtues for market participants, since it allowed the exchanges to specialize in different investors and services and made the exchanges complementary to each other. We demonstrate our claim by looking at both the formal rules and the actual functioning of the Parquet, drawing on its archives which we have recently classified.     

东亚股票市场的一体化及其趋势——基于股指趋同性的分析

伴随着国际资金的频繁流动,东亚金融市场成为国际证券投资的主要地区。东亚各国和地区为了使其股票市场健康稳定发展,采取了一系列措施增强其区域内股票市场的一体化程度。本文通过Johansen协整,方差分解等方法,分析了当前东亚股票市场的股票指数与两大国际股票市场(美国和日本)股票指数的趋同性,以此为基础讨论东亚股票市场的全球一体化程度与区域一体化程度。本文研究发现,东亚股票市场的一体化程度不高,但其全球化程度高于其区域化程度。     

Foreign dependence of individual stock prices: The role of aggregate product market developments

In this paper, we analyze the role of aggregate variables in the transmission from international stock price developments to individual domestic stock prices in a small open stock market. In particular, a theoretical and econometric model is used to determine whether international aggregate product market developments explain observed differences in foreign dependence among individual Belgian stocks. The results suggest that, except for the stocks of some internationally oriented companies, expected international production is not the most important explanatory variable and that an estimation model of aggregate fundamentals explains only part of individual stock price adjustments.     

ANTHROPOMETRIC TRENDS IN SOUTHERN CHINA, 1830–1864

Anthropometric indicators can shed light on the ‘Great Divergence’ debate on the timing of the welfare development in China and Europe. We mobilise two new datasets of some 13,000 Southern Chinese contract migrants who were sent to Suriname and Indonesia, and thus supplement the limited existing evidence on early to mid‐nineteenth century China. The Southern Chinese were about as tall as Southern Europeans during the early and mid‐nineteenth century, but notably shorter than Northwestern Europeans. Height development was stagnant or slightly downward over the period studied, which fits into the pattern of real wage developments at that time.     

Linking, de-linking and re-linking: Southeast Asia in the global economy in the twentieth century

This paper examines how links between the economies of Southeast Asia and the world economy have changed over the twentieth century, paying particular attention to growth in commodity exports, investment flows and international migration. Most parts of Southeast Asia expanded their links with the global economy in the latter part of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but the years from 1940 to 1965 saw a decline in Southeast Asia's share of tropical exports, and of direct foreign investment. Migration flows also slowed. Over the last four decades of the twentieth century, international links expanded again, but there have been marked variations between countries.     

If the landlord so wanted . . . Family,farm production,and land transfers in the manorial system1

The manorial system was a salient feature of the pre‐industrial economy in Europe from the early middle ages until the late nineteenth century. Despite its importance, it is not usually the main focus of eighteenth‐ and early nineteenth‐century European economic history. Looking at a vital manorial economy, this article deals with land transmissions, a crucial factor in the socioeconomic reproduction of pre‐industrial societies, and demonstrates both similarities and important differences between the tenants on manorial land and freeholders. Although their strategies were often similar, we show that the manorial system consisted of a two‐party government—the landlord and the tenant—whose interests did not always coincide. In the nineteenth century, market expansion and commercialization promoted more active landlord strategies in terms of demesne expansions and by means of implementing short‐term leases. This made intergenerational transfers within the family increasingly difficult for tenants.     

Economic Integration and Union Power

The standard utility-maximizing model of the trade union in a closed economy is reformulated for an environment where economic integration is under way or expected to occur soon. In the (European) realistic setting of union-dominated labor markets, domestic wages are shown to be affected by labor market developments abroad. This article provides an explanation of the international transmission of inflation and disinflation     

Why didn't Canada have a banking crisis in 2008 (or in 1930, or 1907, or …)?

The financial crisis of 2008 engulfed the banking system of the US and many large European countries. Canada was a notable exception. In this article we argue that the structure of financial systems is path‐dependent. The relative stability of the Canadian banks in the recent crisis compared to the US in our view reflected the original institutional foundations laid in place in the early nineteenth century in the two countries. The Canadian concentrated banking system that had evolved by the end of the twentieth century had absorbed the key sources of systemic risk—the mortgage market and investment banking—and was tightly regulated by one overarching regulator. In contrast, the relatively weak, fragmented, and crisis‐prone US banking system that had evolved since the early nineteenth century led to the rise of securities markets, investment banks, and money market mutual funds (the shadow banking system) combined with multiple competing regulatory authorities. The consequence was that the systemic risk that led to the crisis of 2007–8 was not contained.     

What drove 19th century commodity market integration?

This paper seeks to answer the titular question of what drove commodity market integration in the 19th century. Using grain markets during the first wave of globalization as a testing ground, the paper builds on the insights of the contemporary trade literature and the economic history of the 19th century and relates levels of market integration to cross-sectional and temporal variations in transport technology, geography, monetary regimes, commercial networks/policy, and conflict. The results of this decomposition analysis are interesting on two counts: first, they verify the commonality of experience of the 19th and late 20th centuries; second, they suggest a very strong role for the commercial, diplomatic, and monetary environment in which market integration took place.     

New annual estimates of Swedish GDP, 1800–2010

Although the historical national accounts of Sweden are among the most detailed in the world, there is scope for improvement. This study revises previous historical estimates of Swedish GDP. Agricultural output is upgraded for the nineteenth century following recent research by Swedish agrarian historians on the underestimation of official statistics. Estimates of annual fluctuations before 1861 are significantly improved by using new sources on yield ratios of harvests. For manufacturing, home industries are added, in accordance with modern international guidelines (2008 SNA). The study concludes that early nineteenth‐century Sweden was not as poor relative to other West European countries as previously thought.     

The ‘Special’ World: Stalin's Power Apparatus and the Soviet System's Secret Structures Of Communication

ABSTRACT

Two of the most defining trends of the nineteenth century were the growth of international trade and the increased role of government activities in the economy. In the conjuncture between these developments lie taxes on foreign trade. Sweden was one of the examples where customs revenue became the single most important source of revenue before WWI. This article sets out to test how this source of revenue could increase as much as it did. The analysis focuses mainly on trade policy and how tariffs were set and how that affected revenue. The results show that Swedish liberalisation of trade forced a switch in the fiscal structure of tariffs, moving revenue to fewer commodities. Increased importance was given to consumption goods with lower elasticity of demand. Trade continued to increase under fiscal taxation, which led to increases in revenue. During the early period increased revenue was achieved with higher tariffs on a few key commodities. Towards the end of the century tariffs on agricultural and capital goods became more fiscally relevant, which could have clashed with protectionist intentions. The article highlights that more work is needed on this fiscal component of trade policy.