The Making of a National Currency: Spatial Transaction Costs and Money Market Integration in Spain (1825-1874)

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: University of Geneva; Center for Economic & Policy Research (CEPR); University of Barcelona; Universitat Rovira i Virgili
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0507
• DOI: 10.1017/S0022050719000561
• 发表日期: 2019
• 页码: 1094-1128
• 关键词: gold standard; arbitrage; points; dollar

摘要

This article analyzes the integration of the Spanish money market in the nineteenth century. We use a Band-Threshold Autoregression model of prices of bills-of-exchange in ten cities to measure market convergence and efficiency in 1825-1875. While price gaps generally decreased during the period, progress in efficiency was limited to a small group of cities. We suggest that convergence was associated to the reduction in transaction costs, which started well before the railways through improvements in roads and postal services. By contrast, the heterogeneous behavior of efficiency might be associated to economic geography changes and their effects on monetary leadership.