IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/10300.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Market Integration and Economic Development: A Long-run Comparison

Author

Listed:
  • Wolfgang Keller
  • Carol H. Shiue

Abstract

How much of China's recent economic performance can be attributed to market-oriented reforms introduced in the last two decades? A long-run perspective may be important for understanding the process of economic development occurring today. This paper compares the integration of rice markets in China today and 270 years ago. In the 18th century, transport technology was non-mechanized, but markets were close to being free markets. We distinguish local harvest and weather from aggregate sources of price variation in a historical sample and in a similarly constructed contemporary sample. Findings indicate the degree of market integration in the 1720s is a very good predictor of per capita income in the 1990s. Moreover, the current pattern of interregional income in China is strongly linked to persistent geographic factors that were already apparent several centuries ago, well before the enactment of modern reform programs.

Suggested Citation

  • Wolfgang Keller & Carol H. Shiue, 2004. "Market Integration and Economic Development: A Long-run Comparison," NBER Working Papers 10300, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:10300
    Note: ITI PR
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w10300.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Coe, David T. & Helpman, Elhanan, 1995. "International R&D spillovers," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 39(5), pages 859-887, May.
    2. David H. Romer & Jeffrey A. Frankel, 1999. "Does Trade Cause Growth?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(3), pages 379-399, June.
    3. Keller, Wolfgang, 1998. "Are international R&D spillovers trade-related?: Analyzing spillovers among randomly matched trade partners," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 42(8), pages 1469-1481, September.
    4. David L. Hummels & Georg Schaur, 2013. "Time as a Trade Barrier," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(7), pages 2935-2959, December.
    5. Mario J. Crucini, 1999. "On International and National Dimensions of Risk Sharing," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 81(1), pages 73-84, February.
    6. Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson & James A. Robinson, 2001. "The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1369-1401, December.
    7. Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson & James Robinson, 2005. "The Rise of Europe: Atlantic Trade, Institutional Change, and Economic Growth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(3), pages 546-579, June.
    8. Abhijit Banerjee & Lakshmi Iyer, 2005. "History, Institutions, and Economic Performance: The Legacy of Colonial Land Tenure Systems in India," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(4), pages 1190-1213, September.
    9. Keller, Wolfgang & Shiue, Carol H., 2007. "The origin of spatial interaction," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 140(1), pages 304-332, September.
    10. Pippenger, John, 2004. "The Modern Theory of the LOP and PPP: Some Implications," University of California at Santa Barbara, Economics Working Paper Series qt60z886n7, Department of Economics, UC Santa Barbara.
    11. Alwyn Young, 2000. "The Razor's Edge: Distortions and Incremental Reform in the People's Republic of China," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 115(4), pages 1091-1135.
    12. Segerstrom, Paul & Dinopoulos, Elias, 2003. "A Theory of North-South Trade and Globalization," CEPR Discussion Papers 4140, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    13. Carol H. Shiue, 2002. "Transport Costs and the Geography of Arbitrage in Eighteenth-Century China," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(5), pages 1406-1419, December.
    14. Alwyn Young, 2000. "The Razor's Edge: Distortions and Incremental Reform in the People's Republic of China," NBER Working Papers 7828, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Kevin O’rourke & Jeffrey Williamson, 2005. "From Malthus to Ohlin: Trade, Industrialisation and Distribution Since 1500," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 10(1), pages 5-34, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Wolfgang Keller & Ben Li & Carol H. Shiue, 2011. "China’s Foreign Trade: Perspectives From the Past 150 Years," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(6), pages 853-892, June.
    2. Liu, Bo & Keyzer, Michiel & van den Boom, Bart & Zikhali, Precious, 2012. "How connected are Chinese farmers to retail markets? New evidence of price transmission," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 34-46.
    3. Robinson, Amanda Lea, 2016. "Internal Borders: Ethnic-Based Market Segmentation in Malawi," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 371-384.
    4. Gugissa, Desalegn A. & Ingenbleek, Paul T.M. & van Trijp, Hans C.M., 2021. "Market knowledge as a driver of sustainable use of common-pool resources: A lab-in-the-field study among pastoralists in Ethiopia," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 185(C).
    5. Masaki Nakabayashi, 2014. "Imposed Efficiency of Treaty Ports: Japanese Industrialization and Western Imperialist Institutions," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 18(2), pages 254-271, May.
    6. Qinghua Zhang & Heng-fu Zou, 2012. "Regional Inequality in Contemporary China," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 13(1), pages 113-137, May.
    7. Haiwen Zhou, 2009. "Population Growth And Industrialization," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 47(2), pages 249-265, April.
    8. Chao Li & John Gibson, 2013. "Spatial Price Differences and Inequality in China: Housing Market Evidence," Working Papers in Economics 13/06, University of Waikato.
    9. Chao Li & John Gibson, 2014. "Spatial Price Differences and Inequality in the People's Republic of China: Housing Market Evidence," Asian Development Review, MIT Press, vol. 31(1), pages 92-120, March.
    10. Jeffrey S. Zax & Yin He, 2016. "The Law Of One Price In Chinese Factor Markets," The Singapore Economic Review (SER), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 61(04), pages 1-31, September.
    11. Fan Duan & Bulent Unel, 2019. "Persistence of cities: Evidence from China," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 23(2), pages 663-676, May.
    12. Hongjun Zhao, 2016. "American Silver Inflow and the Price Revolution in Qing China," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(1), pages 294-305, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Carol H. Shiue & Wolfgang Keller, 2007. "Markets in China and Europe on the Eve of the Industrial Revolution," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(4), pages 1189-1216, September.
    2. Capolupo, Rosa, 2009. "The New Growth Theories and Their Empirics after Twenty Years," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 3, pages 1-72.
    3. Matthias Busse & José L. Groizard, 2008. "Technology Trade in Economic Development," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(4), pages 569-592, April.
    4. Khalid, Usman, 2015. "Why Trading with Dictators May Nevertheless Help the People: On the Interplay between Trade, Political Regimes and Economic Institutions," Working Papers 2015:15, Lund University, Department of Economics, revised 23 Jul 2015.
    5. Jinfeng Luo & Yi Wen, 2015. "Institutions Do Not Rule: Reassessing the Driving Forces of Economic Development," Working Papers 2015-1, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    6. Arjan Lejour & Vladimir Solanic & Paul Tang, 2009. "EU Accession and Income Growth: An Empirical Approach," Transition Studies Review, Springer;Central Eastern European University Network (CEEUN), vol. 16(1), pages 127-144, May.
    7. Eaton, Jonathan & Kortum, Samuel, 2001. "Trade in capital goods," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 45(7), pages 1195-1235.
    8. Herrmann-Pillath, Carsten & Libman, Alexander & Yu, Xiaofan, 2014. "Economic integration in China: Politics and culture," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(2), pages 470-492.
    9. Meissner, Christopher M., 2014. "Growth from Globalization? A View from the Very Long Run," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 8, pages 1033-1069, Elsevier.
    10. Hao Wang & Yuemei Ji & Qi Luo, 2020. "The Employment Effect of Inward FDI in China: What Do We Learn from the History?," CESifo Working Paper Series 8392, CESifo.
    11. Henry Overman & Stephen Redding & Anthony J. Venables, 2001. "The Economic Geography of Trade, Production, and Income: A Survey of Empirics," CEP Discussion Papers dp0508, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    12. Harrison, Ann & Rodríguez-Clare, Andrés, 2010. "Trade, Foreign Investment, and Industrial Policy for Developing Countries," Handbook of Development Economics, in: Dani Rodrik & Mark Rosenzweig (ed.), Handbook of Development Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 4039-4214, Elsevier.
    13. Mark Dincecco & Mauricio Prado, 2012. "Warfare, fiscal capacity, and performance," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 17(3), pages 171-203, September.
    14. Basher, Syed A. & Lagerlöf, Nils-Petter, 2008. "Per-capita income gaps across US states and Canadian provinces," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 1173-1187, September.
    15. Casey, Gregory & Klemp, Marc, 2016. "Instrumental Variables in the Long Run," MPRA Paper 68696, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Tekleselassie, Tsegay Gebrekidan, 2016. "Three essays on the impact of institutions and policies on socio-economic outcomes," Economics PhD Theses 1316, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    17. Yang Jiao & Shang-Jin Wei, 2017. "Intrinsic Openness and Endogenous Institutional Quality," NBER Working Papers 24052, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Sambit Bhattacharyya, 2009. "Root Causes of African Underdevelopment," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 18(5), pages 745-780, November.
    19. Sambit Bhattacharyya & Steve Dowrick & Jane Golley, 2009. "Institutions and Trade: Competitors or Complements in Economic Development?," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 85(270), pages 318-330, September.
    20. M.A. Véganzonès-Varoudakis & H. T. M. Nguyen, 2018. "Investment climate, outward orientation and manufacturing firm productivity: new empirical evidence," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(53), pages 5766-5794, November.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • O1 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development
    • O4 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:10300. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.