IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/auu/hpaper/125.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Information costs and trade: Evidence from international electric telegraphy during the "golden age" of globalisation

Author

Listed:
  • Sean Bottomley
  • Brian D. Varian

Abstract

The development of the international telegraph network coincided with the nineteenth-century "golden age" of globalisation, but whether the former contributed to the latter is a question that has, hitherto, received only limited attention from economic historians. Fundamentally, it is a question that concerns the relationship between information-cost-reducing technology and trade. This paper introduces and utilises what is, we believe, the most comprehensive dataset of the years of international telegraphic linkages ever to have been compiled. Empirically, we analyse the effect of these telegraphic linkages on polity-specific British exports from 1849-90. Aside from intra-Empire trade flows, we find no statistically significant effect of the telegraph on British exports. Furthermore, we argue that previous estimates of the effect of the telegraph network on trade are implausibly high.

Suggested Citation

  • Sean Bottomley & Brian D. Varian, 2024. "Information costs and trade: Evidence from international electric telegraphy during the "golden age" of globalisation," CEH Discussion Papers 09, Centre for Economic History, Research School of Economics, Australian National University.
    • Handle: RePEc:auu:hpaper:125
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cbe.anu.edu.au/researchpapers/CEH/WP202409.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    globalisation; information costs; nineteenth century; technology; telegraph; trade;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F15 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Economic Integration
    • N70 - Economic History - - Economic History: Transport, International and Domestic Trade, Energy, and Other Services - - - General, International, or Comparative

    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:auu:hpaper:125. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/chanuau.html .

    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.