Information and price convergence
Government telegraphs in British India
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8961539 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Tahir Andrabi (Pomona College), Sheetal Bharat (Dr B. R. Ambedkar School of Economics University, Bengaluru), Michael Kuehlwein (Pomona College, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 60 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 301-334 |
| Publication date | 2023-07-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Indian Economic & Social History Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0019-4646 • E-ISSN: 0973-0893 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/00194646231183371 |
| OpenAlex | W4385951330 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 29 |
In contrast to the abundant literature on railways, there are few studies of the impact of telegraphs—another revolutionary nineteenth-century technology—on price convergence. Most measure the impact on international commodity-price differences between developed countries given an efficient form of transportation: ocean shipping. This article estimates the impact of government telegraphs within a major developing economy—British India—which lacked efficient pre-railway transportation. We use data from almost 200 districts, collected for the period between 1862 and 1920, when over 13,000 district pairs were linked by government telegraphs. We estimate that before the introduction of railways, the presence of telegraphs reduced grain-price dispersion by 7%–13%. There were also spill-over effects on neighbouring districts, the timing of which strongly suggests causation from telegraphs to prices. The results imply that telegraphs played their own important role in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century market integration in the developing world. Like railroads, telegraphs in British India significantly contributed to linking geographically dispersed commodity markets to each other to create a more unified economy
Causation · Commodity · Convergence (economics · Developing country · Econometrics · Economic geography · Economic growth · Economics · Economy · Geography · Government (linguistics · International economics · Market economy · Political science · Price dispersion · Global trade and economics · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Merger and Competition Analysis
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Early globalizations
The Rise and Fall of the Indigo Industry in India
India's Railway History
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Railroads of the Raj
Railways and Price Convergence in British India
Sir William O'Shaughnessy, Lord Dalhousie, and the Establishment of the Telegraph System in India
Economic Change and the Railways in North India, 1860-1914
The International Market in Rice and Wheat, 1868-1914
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |