IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedmsr/425.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Transportation and development: insights from the U.S., 1840-1860

Author

Listed:
  • Berthold Herrendorf
  • James A. Schmitz
  • Arilton Teixeira

Abstract

We study the effects of large transportation costs on economic development. We argue that the Midwest and the Northeast of the U.S. is a natural case because starting from 1840 decent data is available showing that the two regions shared key characteristics with today?s developing countries and that transportation costs were large and then came way down. To disentangle the effects of the large reduction in transportation costs from those of other changes that happened during 1840?1860, we build a model that speaks to the distribution of people across regions and across the sectors of production. We find that the large reduction in transportation costs was a quantitatively important force behind the settlement of the Midwest and the regional specialization that concentrated agriculture in the Midwest and industry in the Northeast. Moreover, we find that it led to the convergence of the regional per capita incomes measured in current regional prices and that it increased real GDP per capita. However, the increase in real GDP per capita is considerably smaller than that resulting from the productivity growth in the nontransportation sectors.

Suggested Citation

  • Berthold Herrendorf & James A. Schmitz & Arilton Teixeira, 2009. "Transportation and development: insights from the U.S., 1840-1860," Staff Report 425, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedmsr:425
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.minneapolisfed.org/research/SR/SR425.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications_papers/pub_display.cfm?id=4212
    Download Restriction: no

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Guillaume Vandenbroucke, 2008. "The U.S. Westward Expansion," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 49(1), pages 81-110, February.
    2. Tasso Adamopoulos, 2011. "Transportation Costs, Agricultural Productivity, And Cross‐Country Income Differences," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 52(2), pages 489-521, May.
    3. Akos Valentinyi & Berthold Herrendorf, 2008. "Measuring Factor Income Shares at the Sector Level," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 11(4), pages 820-835, October.
    4. Thomas Weiss, 1987. "The Farm Labor Force by Region, 1820-1860: Revised Estimates and Implications for Growth," NBER Working Papers 2438, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Coelho, Philip R. P. & Shepherd, James F., 1976. "Regional differences in real wages: The United States, 1851-1880," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 203-230, April.
    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. Dave Donaldson & Richard Hornbeck, 2016. "Railroads and American Economic Growth: A "Market Access" Approach," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 131(2), pages 799-858.
    2. Pablo Fajgelbaum & Stephen J. Redding, 2014. "External Integration, Structural Transformation and Economic Development: Evidence From Argentina," CEP Discussion Papers dp1273, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    3. Pablo Fajgelbaum & Stephen J. Redding, 2014. "External Integration, Structural Transformation and Economic Development: Evidence from Argentina 1870-1914," NBER Working Papers 20217, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Berthold Herrendorf & Richard Rogerson & ?kos Valentinyi, 2013. "Two Perspectives on Preferences and Structural Transformation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(7), pages 2752-2789, December.
    5. Tombe, Trevor, 2011. "Structural change and regional convergence: the case of declining transport costs," MPRA Paper 34053, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Paul Caruana-Galizia & Jordi Mart�-Henneberg, 2013. "European regional railways and real income, 1870-1910: a preliminary report," Scandinavian Economic History Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 61(2), pages 167-196, June.
    7. Pérez-Cervantes Fernando, 2014. "Railroads and Economic Growth: A Trade Policy Approach," Working Papers 2014-14, Banco de México.
    8. Tombe, Trevor, 2010. "Regions, frictions, and migrations in a model of structural transformation," MPRA Paper 26641, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Felis-Rota, Marta, 2014. "A VAR Analysis of the Transportation Revolution in Europe," Working Papers in Economic History 2014/01, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain), Department of Economic Analysis (Economic Theory and Economic History).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Transportation; Developing countries; Middle West;

    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:fip:fedmsr:425. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/cfrbmus.html .

    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 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.

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.