یکپارچه سازی درونی و بین المللی بازار کالا در اقتصاد اقیانوس اطلس، 1800-1913

In this paper, the course of intra- and international market integration in the nineteenth century Atlantic economy is investigated. The most fundamental contribution of the paper is in consistently sketching the course of commodity market integration over the long run. Additionally, this study suggests that the nineteenth century has been somewhat misread in terms of the development of markets as the evidence, especially on price convergence, points to dramatic improvements in intra- and international market integration in the years prior to the mid-century. A collective task for economic historians, then, is to link these developments with the revolutionary commercial and technological developments of the post-1850 period.

What this paper sets as its task is to investigate the course of both intra- and international commodity market integration for a sample of 10 countries—namely Austria–Hungary, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Russia, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States—which participated in the Atlantic economy of the long nineteenth century from 1800 to 1913. Along the way, market integration is divided into two separate but related sub-processes, that of price convergence (roughly, the size of price differentials and their diminution over time) and price adjustment (roughly, the speed at which profitable price differential are arbitraged away). On this basis, a set of two criteria are formulated and then put to work as a means to assess the course of intra- and international market integration on a country-by-country basis. The most fundamental contribution of the paper is in consistently sketching the course of commodity market integration over the long run. Additionally, this study suggests that the nineteenth century has been somewhat misread in terms of the development of markets as the evidence, especially on price convergence, points to dramatic improvements in intra- and international market integration in the years prior to the mid-century. A collective task for economic historians, then, is to link these developments with the revolutionary commercial and technological developments of the post-1850 period.