Border Changes and price Adjustment: Evidence from Interwar Poland, 1918-1939

Nikolaus Wolf

Homo Oeconomicus, 2004, vol. 21, 133-153

Abstract: In this essay, the impact of changing political borders on market integration in inter-war Poland, specifically in the years between 1921 and 1937, is analysed. Since the late eighteenth century, Poland had been divided between Russia, the Habsburg Empire, and the emergent Prussia, reappearing on the political map of Europe only after the First World War. Here, it is examined how Polish markets responded, among other things, to changes in tariff barriers. Methods from quantitative economics are employed to study a set of monthly price series which cover the largest cities of the former partition areas. The evidence points to a surprisingly fast and complete adjustment of commodity prices to the new institutional framework. It suggests that from the mid 1920s onwards, Poland was a well integrated economy, reaching a degree of integration comparable to that of France at the end of the nineteenth century.

Date: 2004
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
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:hom:homoec:v:21:y:2004:p:133-153

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Homo Oeconomicus from Institute of SocioEconomics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().