Grain Market Integration in the Baltic Sea Region in the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

This article explores the development of market integration within the Baltic Sea region and with England, from the 1840s to the late 1880s. It exploits two new datasets on grain prices. The degree of market integration is estimated using a wavelet variant of dynamic factor analysis that takes account of both time and distance. Additionally, we use the London corn market as the benchmark for the degree of market integration. Our results show that the role of distance disappeared in the wheat and rye, but not in the oats and barley trade, as the Baltic Sea Region became integrated into the Atlantic economy.

Economic reform and political stagnation: The inconsistent patterns of institutional change

“…We, therefore, follow , Andersson and Ljungberg (2015) and Henning et al (2011) to construct a test for institutional convergence that allows for the presence of clubs that may begin to catch-up only at later stages of the observation period by taking into account the potential measurement error and the slow-moving nature of institutions. The test for institutional convergence is constructed as follows: let Y it be the quality of institutions for country i at time t. The change in institutional quality is given by Δy it = log(Y it ) − log(Y it−1 ), where the first difference is taken to avoid spurious results caused by non-stationarity in the data and where the log accounts for incremental institutional change as a country reaches its steady state.…”

“…We, therefore, follow Andersson et al (2013), Andersson and Ljungberg (2015) and Henning et al (2011) to construct a test for institutional convergence that allows for the presence of clubs that may begin to catch‐up only at later stages of the observation period by taking into account the potential measurement error and the slow‐moving nature of institutions. The test for institutional convergence is constructed as follows: let Y it be the quality of institutions for country i at time t .…”

The evolution of ottoman–European market linkages, 1469–1914: Evidence from dynamic factor models

“…21 See, for example, Brunt andCannon (2014), Federico (2007), and Getnet et al (2005). 22 See Uebele ( 2011) for an analysis of wheat market integration between European and US cities; for an investigation of grain market integration in the Baltic Sea region during the 19th century, see Andersson and Ljungberg (2015). namic factor models within a state-space framework.…”

Review of periodical literature published in 2015

“…The notion of perfect eighteenth‐ and nineteenth‐century markets received further assault by Andersson and Ljungberg, who publish new grain price datasets for the Baltic market and, using a wavelet variant of dynamic factor analysis, find that these markets were only partially integrated into the Atlantic economy by the mid‐nineteenth century. Herment and Ronsijn have an alternative perspective on grain markets of the 1820s to 1840s in Belgium, England, and France.…”