China inside out: explaining silver flows in the triangular trade, c.1820s-1870s
Alejandra Irigoin,
Atsushi Kobayashi and
David Chilosi
LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library
Abstract:
This paper analyses a new, large dataset of silver prices, as well as silver and merchandise trade flows in and out of China in the crucial decades of the mid-19th century when the Empire was opened to world trade. Silver flows were associated with the interaction between heterogenous monetary preferences and availability of specific coins. Before the 1850s, money markets became increasingly efficient, as reliance on bills of exchange allowed exports to grow in times when sound money was in short supply. When a new standard for silver eventually emerged, there was a new peak in China’s silver imports.
Keywords: China silver flows; triangular trade settlement mechanism; exchange operations; arbitrage; ‘opening of China’ (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E42 F33 N10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 45 pages
Date: 2023-07-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna, nep-his, nep-inv, nep-mac and nep-mon
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/119759/ Open access version. (application/pdf)
Related works:
Working Paper: China inside out: explaining silver flows in the triangular trade, c.1820s-1870s (2025) 
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:119759
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().