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"Grain trade Canada History."
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The Integration of Grain Markets in the Eighteenth Century: Early Rise of Globalization in the West
Globalization, if defined as the integration of international commodity markets, started in the eighteenth century and progressed gradually and with some setbacks into the nineteenth century, instead of suddenly appearing at some point after the 1820s. We use grain prices in Europe and the Americas to determine the extent and dynamics of market integration throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. An innovative methodology, with special attention being paid to changes in residual dispersion of the univariate models of relative prices between markets, permits us to obtain a measure of market integration over time.
Journal Article
The gains from improved market efficiency: trade before and after the transatlantic telegraph
This article looks at the gains from improved market efficiency in long-distance grain trade in the second half of the nineteenth century, when violations of the law of one price were reduced due to improved information transmission. Two markets, a major export centre, Chicago, and a major importer, Liverpool, are analysed. We show that the law of one price equilibrium was an ‘attractor equilibrium’. The implication is that prices converged to that equilibrium in a tâtonnement process. Because of asymmetrically timed information between markets separated by long distances there were periods of excess demand as well as excess supply, which triggered off the tâtonnement process. Over time, adjustments to equilibrium, as measured by the half-life of a shock, became faster and violations of the law of one price become smaller. There were significant gains from improved market efficiency, which took place after the information ‘regime’ shifted from pre-telegraphic communication to a regime with swift transmission of information in an era that saw the development of a sophisticated commercial press and telegraphic communication. This article is the first attempt to actually measure the gains from improved market efficiency and it demonstrates that improved market efficiency probably stimulated trade more than falling transatlantic transport costs. Deadweight losses decline significantly as markets became more efficient. The conventional view that Harberger triangles are almost always insignificant is challenged.
Journal Article
Feeding the British: convergence and market efficiency in the nineteenth-century grain trade
This paper traces the evolution of the international market for wheat, from an emerging market structure after the repeal of the corn laws to a mature market characterized by efficient arbitrage after the introduction of the transatlantic telegraph and the growth of trade. Efficiency is documented using traditional price gap accounting as well as error correction modelling. Markets which traded directly with each other as well as markets which did not trade with each other were integrated. The traditional bilateral focus in market integration studies has been extended to a multivariate approach, which generates new insights into the pattern of diffusion of price shocks in the international economy. Shocks in the major importing nation, Britain, dominated in the emerging market phase, while shocks in the major exporting economy, the United States, dominated international price movements at the end of the nineteenth century.
Journal Article
Steers Afloat: The North Atlantic Meat Trade, Liner Predominance, and Freight Rates, 1870–1913
Meat transformed North Atlantic shipping, leading to dominance of liners and changed the economics of freight rates. Management coordination of meat shipment led to concentration in shipping. Only liner companies could provide specialized ships with the regularity needed and they dominated North Atlantic shipping. The cargo capacity of cattle ships, beyond that used for animals, lowered freight rates on grain below levels that would otherwise have prevailed. The berth rate on wheat from New York to Liverpool was most affected. Consequently, this readily available freight rate can be potentially misleading as an indicator of ocean shipping developments.
Journal Article
Transatlantic Transformations: Visualizing Change Over Time in the Liverpool–New York Trade Network, 1763–1833
In the early modern Atlantic world, trade brought communities and commodities closer together and, as a result, many merchants became linked in expansive networks of exchange. The unstable nature of long-distance trade meant that these networks were continually being transformed. The Liverpool–New York trade network, in particular, underwent many changes between 1763 and 1833. The article aims to demonstrate how the use of network visualizations over three distinct phases (1760–1790, 1790–1815, and 1815–1833) can elucidate these changes and provide a different approach for studying the development of this trading community. These visualizations will serve to illustrate the extent to which this network was dynamic and further our understanding of how merchant networks sustained longevity and coped with risks in the ever-changing Atlantic world.
Journal Article
Electrification, Tractorization, and Motorization: Revisiting the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act
The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 has been typically viewed as being the Republican Party's policy response to weak farm prices which - via political logrolling - snowballed into a full-fledged, across-the-board tariff bill, wreaking havoc at home and abroad (Irwin 2011; Shattschneider 1935; Taussig 1930). Empirical evidence, however, has failed to confirm this hypothesis (Callahan, McDonald and O'Brien 1994; Destler 1986; Pastor 1980). Rather, voting patterns in the Senate have been consistent with the \"party platform\" hypothesis. This paper presents an alternative account of the origins of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, which is in keeping with the \"party platform\" hypothesis, and whose results are consistent with the \"log-rolling\" hypothesis. Specifically, I argue that the demand for protection on the part of U.S. farmers and manufacturers in the late 1920s, and the subsequent supply of protection by the Republican Party, were the direct result of a general-purpose technology shock - namely, electrification whose diffusion throughout the 1920s led to significant excess capacity in manufacturing and agriculture. In manufacturing, more productive firms became increasingly constrained on product markets. The resulting tractorization of U.S. agriculture and the motorization (trucks and automobiles) of transportation throughout the 1920s wreaked havoc on an already weakened agricultural sector (owing to lower post-war exports) by decreasing the demand by 48,294,887 grain- and hayequivalent acres. The proposed tariff bill sought to increase domestic firms' market share in these industries by reducing imports.
Journal Article
Railroads and Price Discrimination: The Roles of Competition, Information, and Regulation
I evaluate railroad price discrimination in three periods: 1870–1886, before the passage of the Interstate Commerce Act; 1945–1975, when rates were regulated but railroads faced extensive intermodal competition; and 1980–2010, after the passage of major regulatory reforms. While price discrimination was widespread in each period, the specific practices varied as the nature of competition, regulation, and the information available to decision-makers changed. The Act focused heavily on price discrimination, and limited some practices while encouraging others. One major weakness of the Act was the restrictions that were imposed on pricing practices that could lead to cost reductions and productivity improvements.
Journal Article
New results on the tariff–growth paradox
This article investigates the question of how openness affected the growth of income in the late nineteenth-century Atlantic economy. More specifically, is the tariff-growth correlation identified by O'Rourke (2000) driven by European offshoots? Is the correlation perhaps explained by the concurrent integration of intranational markets before 1914? And what can other measures of openness tell us about the growth process in the nineteenth century? This note offers some answers. The results can be summarised as follows: O'Rourke's primary finding is not altered by changes in the sample; incorporating measures of inter- and intranational market integration into the analysis again supports O'Rourke's findings, but apparently leaves no role for intranational market integration; and evidence from trade-flow data suggests that there may been a pro-growth role for tariffs in a non-reciprocal trade environment.
Journal Article
The Limits of Alliance: Cold War Solidarity and Canadian Wheat Exports to China, 1950-1963
Although Canada was a committed member of the western alliance and publically supported Washington, DC's efforts to isolate communist China, Ottawa embarked on large-scale wheat sales to Beijing in the late 1950s in the face of sustained US opposition. Drawing on a broad range of archival records, this paper explores the three main factors that encouraged the Canadian government in this course: growing doubts about the wisdom of isolating communist China; mounting anger at Washington, DC's use of subsidized wheat sales to capture traditional Canadian markets; and a surging sense of Canadian nationalism that sought a distinct role for Canada on the world stage. Clearly, as was so often the case in postwar Canadian foreign economic policy, a narrowly defined national interest easily trumped the ideological pressures of western solidarity.
Journal Article