IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/revind/v43y2013i1p41-62.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Effects of the Interstate Commerce Act on Transport Costs: Evidence from Wheat Prices

Author

Listed:
  • Bruce Blonigen
  • Anca Cristea

Abstract

There is significant debate over the effect of the Interstate Commerce Act (ICA) on the cost of rail transport to shippers. Taking price differences across locations as proxy for transport costs, we use data on wheat prices before and after the implementation of the ICA to see if the Act led to smaller differences in wheat prices across American cities relative to a control group of European cities. We find that the ICA had no effect on US transport costs; however, it reduced their volatility substantially. This evidence supports the view that the ICA helped stabilize cartel prices after a period of significant price wars. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013

Suggested Citation

  • Bruce Blonigen & Anca Cristea, 2013. "The Effects of the Interstate Commerce Act on Transport Costs: Evidence from Wheat Prices," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 43(1), pages 41-62, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:revind:v:43:y:2013:i:1:p:41-62
    DOI: 10.1007/s11151-013-9394-8
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11151-013-9394-8
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11151-013-9394-8?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Balke, Nathan S & Fomby, Thomas B, 1997. "Threshold Cointegration," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 38(3), pages 627-645, August.
    2. Hansen, Bruce E. & Seo, Byeongseon, 2002. "Testing for two-regime threshold cointegration in vector error-correction models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 110(2), pages 293-318, October.
    3. Dennis, Scott M., 1999. "Using spatial equilibrium models to analyze transportation rates: an application to steam coal in the United States," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 145-154, September.
    4. Carol H. Shiue & Wolfgang Keller, 2007. "Markets in China and Europe on the Eve of the Industrial Revolution," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(4), pages 1189-1216, September.
    5. Ulen, Thomas S, 1980. "The Market for Regulation: The ICC from 1887 to 1920," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 70(2), pages 306-310, May.
    6. John J. Binder, 1985. "Measuring the Effects of Regulation with Stock Price Data," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 16(2), pages 167-183, Summer.
    7. Persson, Karl Gunnar, 2004. "Mind the gap! Transport costs and price convergence in the nineteenth century Atlantic economy," European Review of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 8(2), pages 125-147, August.
    8. Goodwin, Barry K. & Grennes, Thomas J., 1998. "Tsarist Russia and the World Wheat Market," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 35(4), pages 405-430, October.
    9. Saxonhouse, Gary R, 1976. "Estimated Parameters as Dependent Variables," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 66(1), pages 178-183, March.
    10. Taylor, Alan M. & Canjels, Eugene & Prakash-Canjels, Gauri, 2004. "Measuring Market Integration: Foreign Exchange Arbitrage and the Gold Standard 1874-1913," CEPR Discussion Papers 4492, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    11. Eugene Canjels & Gauri Prakash-Canjels & Alan M. Taylor, 2004. "Measuring Market Integration: Foreign Exchange Arbitrage and the Gold Standard, 1879-1913," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 86(4), pages 868-882, November.
    12. Richard O. Zerbe Jr., 1980. "The Costs and Benefits of Early Regulation of the Railroads," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 11(1), pages 343-350, Spring.
    13. Jacks, David S., 2006. "What drove 19th century commodity market integration?," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 43(3), pages 383-412, July.
    14. Hansen Bruce E., 1997. "Inference in TAR Models," Studies in Nonlinear Dynamics & Econometrics, De Gruyter, vol. 2(1), pages 1-16, April.
    15. Meyer, Bruce D, 1995. "Natural and Quasi-experiments in Economics," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 13(2), pages 151-161, April.
    16. Thomas W. Gilligan & William J. Marshall & Barry R. Weingast, 1990. "The Economic Incidence of the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis of the Short-Haul Pricing Constraint," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 21(2), pages 189-210, Summer.
    17. Robin A. Prager, 1989. "Using Stock Price Data to Measure the Effects of Regulation: The Interstate Commerce Act and the Railroad Industry," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 20(2), pages 280-290, Summer.
    18. Jacks, David S., 2005. "Intra- and international commodity market integration in the Atlantic economy, 1800-1913," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 42(3), pages 381-413, July.
    19. Robert H. Porter, 1983. "A Study of Cartel Stability: The Joint Executive Committee, 1880-1886," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 14(2), pages 301-314, Autumn.
    20. Robert M. Spann & Edward W. Erickson, 1970. "The Economics of Railroading: The Beginning of Cartelization and Regulation," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 1(2), pages 227-244, Autumn.
    21. O'Rourke, Kevin H & Taylor, Alan M & Williamson, Jeffrey G, 1996. "Factor Price Convergence in the Late Nineteenth Century," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 37(3), pages 499-530, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Daniel P. Gross, 2020. "Collusive Investments in Technological Compatibility: Lessons from U.S. Railroads in the Late 19th Century," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(12), pages 5683-5700, December.
    2. Richard L. Schmalensee & Wesley W. Wilson, 2016. "Modernizing U.S. Freight Rail Regulation," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 49(2), pages 133-159, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jacks, David S., 2006. "What drove 19th century commodity market integration?," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 43(3), pages 383-412, July.
    2. Kevin Henrickson & Wesley Wilson, 2013. "Voting, Regulation, and the Railroad Industry: An Analysis of Private and Public Interest Voting Patterns," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 43(1), pages 21-39, August.
    3. Federico, Giovanni, 2007. "Market integration and market efficiency: The case of 19th century Italy," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 293-316, April.
    4. Ihle, Rico & von Cramon-Taubadel, Stephan, 2008. "A Comparison of Threshold Cointegration and Markov-Switching Vector Error Correction Models in Price Transmission Analysis," 2008 Conference, April 21-22, 2008, St. Louis, Missouri 37603, NCCC-134 Conference on Applied Commodity Price Analysis, Forecasting, and Market Risk Management.
    5. Stephen Norman, 2016. "Attractor misspecification and threshold estimation bias," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 36(4), pages 1911-1921.
    6. William Hynes & David S. Jacks & Kevin H. O'rourke, 2012. "Commodity market disintegration in the interwar period," European Review of Economic History, European Historical Economics Society, vol. 16(2), pages 119-143, May.
    7. Bernholz, Peter & Kugler, Peter, 2011. "Financial market integration in the early modern period in Spain: Results from a threshold error correction model," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 110(2), pages 93-96, February.
    8. Jun Lee & Miguel I. Gómez, 2013. "Impacts of the End of the Coffee Export Quota System on International-to-Retail Price Transmission," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 64(2), pages 343-362, June.
    9. Chang, Chia-Lin & Chen, Li-Hsueh & Hammoudeh, Shawkat & McAleer, Michael, 2012. "Asymmetric adjustments in the ethanol and grains markets," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(6), pages 1990-2002.
    10. García-Hiernaux, Alfredo & Guerrero, David E. & McAleer, Michael, 2016. "Market integration dynamics and asymptotic price convergence in distribution," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 52(PB), pages 913-925.
    11. Chilosi, David & Murphy, Tommy E. & Studer, Roman & Tunçer, A. Coşkun, 2013. "Europe's many integrations: Geography and grain markets, 1620–1913," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 50(1), pages 46-68.
    12. Goodwin, Barry K. & Grennes, Thomas J. & Craig, Lee A., 2002. "Mechanical Refrigeration and the Integration of Perishable Commodity Markets," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 154-182, April.
    13. Goodwin, Barry K. & Harper, Daniel C., 2000. "Price Transmission, Threshold Behavior, And Asymmetric Adjustment In The U.S. Pork Sector," Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics, Southern Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 32(3), pages 1-11, December.
    14. Wolfgang Keller & Carol H. Shiue & Xin Wang, 2020. "Capital markets and grain prices: assessing the storage cost approach," Cliometrica, Springer;Cliometric Society (Association Francaise de Cliométrie), vol. 14(2), pages 367-396, May.
    15. Peter Kugler, 2011. "Financial Market Integration in Late Medieval Europe: Results from a Threshold Error Correction Model for the Rhinegulden and Basle Pound 1365-1429," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES), vol. 147(III), pages 337-352, September.
    16. Menkhoff, Lukas & Rebitzky, Rafael R., 2008. "Investor sentiment in the US-dollar: Longer-term, non-linear orientation on PPP," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 15(3), pages 455-467, June.
    17. Barry K. Goodwin & Nicholas E. Piggott, 2001. "Spatial Market Integration in the Presence of Threshold Effects," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 83(2), pages 302-317.
    18. Ben Kaabia, Monia & Gil, Jose Maria & Boshnjaku, L., 2002. "Price Transmission Asymmetries in the Spanish Lamb Sector," 2002 International Congress, August 28-31, 2002, Zaragoza, Spain 24908, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    19. David Chilosi & Giovanni Federico, 2021. "The effects of market integration during the first globalization: a multi-market approach," European Review of Economic History, European Historical Economics Society, vol. 25(1), pages 20-58.
    20. Ben Kaabia, Monia & Gil, Jose Maria, 2005. "Asymetric Price Transmission in the Spanish Lamb Sector," 2005 International Congress, August 23-27, 2005, Copenhagen, Denmark 24631, European Association of Agricultural Economists.

    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:kap:revind:v:43:y:2013:i:1:p:41-62. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.