This paper seeks to reconcile two seemingly contradictory strands in the literature on economic development in the late nineteenth century Habsburg Empire - one emphasizing the centrifugal impact of rising intra-empire of nationalism, the other stressing significant improvements in market integration across the empire. We argue 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 or asymmetric integration with neighbouring regions abroad. Instead, differential integration along ethno-linguistic lines was driven by the formation of ethno-linguistic networks. Finally, the analysis shows that the emerging pre-war regional integration patterns – shaped by nationalist sentiment – effectively anticipated the post-war settlement: the fault lines along which the Habsburg Empire was to break up eventually are evident in the price data about a quarter of a century or so before the outbreak of the First World War.
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Paper provided by CESifo Group Munich in its series CESifo Working Paper Series with number
CESifo Working Paper No. 2813.
Find related papers by JEL classification: F15 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Economic Integration J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities and Races; Non-labor Discrimination N13 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Growth and Fluctuations - - - Europe: Pre-1913
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Fackler, Paul L. & Goodwin, Barry K., 2001.
"Spatial price analysis,"
Handbook of Agricultural Economics,
in: B. L. Gardner & G. C. Rausser (ed.), Handbook of Agricultural Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 17, pages 971-1024
Elsevier.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Engel, Charles & Rogers, John H, 1996.
"How Wide Is the Border?,"
American Economic Review,
American Economic Association, vol. 86(5), pages 1112-25, December.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
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