IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/jechis/v39y1979i04p939-960_09.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Indispensable Railroads in a Backward Economy: The Case of Mexico

Author

Listed:
  • Coatsworth, John H.

Abstract

The contribution of railroads to economic growth in the nineteenth century depended on two critical variables: unit savings in transport costs the railroads made possible and the quantity of passengers and freight the railroads attracted. Unit savings depended mainly on geography; either cheap water transport existed before the railroads or it did not. Unit savings depended secondarily on the value of the time the railroads saved and on the flexibility in selection of routes made possible by the new technology. The quantities of passengers and freight actually transported depended on two interrelated factors: the prior development of the economy and its responsiveness to cheaper transport.

Suggested Citation

  • Coatsworth, John H., 1979. "Indispensable Railroads in a Backward Economy: The Case of Mexico," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 39(4), pages 939-960, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:jechis:v:39:y:1979:i:04:p:939-960_09
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0022050700098685/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Isaías N. Chaves & Stanley L. Engerman & James A. Robinson, 2013. "Reinventing the Wheel: The Economic Benefits of Wheeled Transportation in Early British Colonial West Africa," NBER Working Papers 19673, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Vincent Bignon & Rui Esteves & Alfonso Herranz-Loncán, 2015. "Big push or big grab? Railways, government activism, and export growth in Latin America, 1865–1913," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 68(4), pages 1277-1305, November.
    3. Carson, Scott Alan, 2005. "The biological standard of living in 19th century Mexico and in the American West," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 3(3), pages 405-419, December.
    4. Tim Leunig & Joachim Voth, 2011. "Spinning Welfare: the Gains from Process Innovation in Cotton and Car Production," CEP Discussion Papers dp1050, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    5. Laura Maravall Buckwalter, 2018. "Build it and they will come? Secondary railways and population density in French Algeria," Working Papers 18008, Economic History Society.
    6. Elizalde, Aldo & Hidalgo, Eduardo & Salgado, Nayeli, 2023. "Public good or public bad? Indigenous institutions and the demand for public goods," QUCEH Working Paper Series 23-01, Queen's University Belfast, Queen's University Centre for Economic History.
    7. Andrea Forero & Francisco Gallego & Felipe González & Matías Tapia, 2020. "Railroads, specialization, and population growth in small open economies: Evidence from the First Globalization," Documentos de Trabajo 548, Instituto de Economia. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile..
    8. Lee Alston & Shannan Mattiace & Tomas Nonnenmacher, 2008. "Coercion, Culture and Debt Contracts: The Henequen Industry in Yucatan, Mexico, 1870-1915," NBER Working Papers 13852, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Tim Leunig, 2010. "Social Savings," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(5), pages 775-800, December.
    10. Raymundo M. Campos-Vázquez & Roberto Vélez-Grajales, 2010. "Did population well-being improve during Porfirian Mexico? An approximation using a Quasi-Index of human development," Serie documentos de trabajo del Centro de Estudios Económicos 2010-13, El Colegio de México, Centro de Estudios Económicos.
    11. Alfonso Herranz-Loncán & Johan Fourie, 2018. "“For the public benefit”? Railways in the British Cape Colony," European Review of Economic History, European Historical Economics Society, vol. 22(1), pages 73-100.
    12. Leunig, Tim & Voth, Joachim, 2011. "Spinning welfare: the gains from process innovation in cotton and car production," Economic History Working Papers 121731, London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Economic History.
    13. Berger, Thor, 2019. "Railroads and Rural Industrialization: evidence from a Historical Policy Experiment," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    14. Pushkar Maitra & William Yu, 2021. "The Long Shadow of Infrastructure Development: Long Run Effects of Railway Construction in Colonial India," Monash Economics Working Papers 2021-01, Monash University, Department of Economics.
    15. de Jesús Fonseca, Felipe & Gómez-Zaldívar, Manuel & Ventosa-Santaulària, Daniel, 2020. "Public investment and economic activity in Mexico, 1925-1981," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 14, pages 1-24.
    16. Andrés Forero & Francisco A. Gallego & Felipe González & Matías Tapia, 2021. "Railroads, specialization, and population growth: evidence from the first globalization," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 34(3), pages 1027-1072, July.
    17. Matthew McCartney, 2018. "The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC): Considering Contemporary Pakistan through Old-Fashioned Economics and Historical Case Studies," Lahore Journal of Economics, Department of Economics, The Lahore School of Economics, vol. 23(2), pages 19-48, July-Dec.
    18. Herranz-Loncan, Alfonso, 2011. "The contribution of railways to economic growth in Latin America before 1914: a growth accounting approach," MPRA Paper 33578, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Dobado, Rafael & Marrero, Gustavo A., 2005. "Corn Market Integration in Porfirian Mexico," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 65(1), pages 103-128, March.
    20. Carson, Scott Alan, 2007. "Mexican body mass index values in the late-19th-century American West," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 5(1), pages 37-47, March.
    21. Barakatou Atte-Oudeyi & Bruno Kestemont & Jean Luc De Meulemeester, 2016. "Road Transport, Economic Growth and Carbon Dioxide Emissions in the BRIICS: Conditions For a Low Carbon Economic Development," Working Papers CEB 16-023, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.

    More about this item

    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:cup:jechis:v:39:y:1979:i:04:p:939-960_09. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/jeh .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.