IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/21951.html

Politics-driven Market Access and Its Cost: Evidence from China’s Grand Canal

Author

Listed:
  • Bai, Ying
  • Bian, Xiaoyu
  • Jia, Ruixue

Abstract

Transportation networks often radiate from national capitals, reflecting political priorities as much as economic logic. How costly is infrastructure built for politics rather than markets? We study China’s Grand Canal: when the Mongols moved the capital from the central plain to Beijing, the canal followed, bypassing the economic core it once served. Using a grid-year panel spanning five dynasties (8th–19th centuries), we show the route best suited to reach the capital predicts the canal’s actual path. This redesign reshaped market access and, through it, population. Counterfactual analysis shows the canal raised population by 2.5–6.1%, but its politically motivated redesign cost 1.1–2.2%.

Suggested Citation

  • Bai, Ying & Bian, Xiaoyu & Jia, Ruixue, 2026. "Politics-driven Market Access and Its Cost: Evidence from China’s Grand Canal," CEPR Discussion Papers 21951, Centre for Economic Policy Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21951
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP21951
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • O18 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Urban, Rural, Regional, and Transportation Analysis; Housing; Infrastructure
    • R12 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Size and Spatial Distributions of Regional Economic Activity; Interregional Trade (economic geography)
    • N75 - Economic History - - Economic History: Transport, International and Domestic Trade, Energy, and Other Services - - - Asia including Middle East
    • N45 - Economic History - - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation - - - Asia including Middle East

    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:cpr:ceprdp:21951. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: CEPR (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://cepr.org/ .

    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.