Measuring mercantile concentration in eighteenth-century British America: Charleston, 1735–1775

Peter A. Coclanis and Tomoko Yagyu

Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History, 2023, vol. 56, issue 1, 1-17

Abstract: In this article, the authors attempt to advance discussions of mercantile concentration in British North America in the eighteenth century by employing two measurement tools common in the field of industrial organization-concentration ratios and the Hirschman-Herfindahl Index (HHI)—to measure and analyze concentration levels in Charleston, South Carolina between 1735 and 1775. These tools allow for the creation of standardized measures, easing comparisons with other mercantile groups across space and time. The principal results suggest that mercantile concentration levels in Charleston were not high by modern standards, and that concentration may even have declined a bit over the course of this 41-year period. The authors draw on insights from the literature in industrial organization and the new institutional history to explain their findings. In so doing, they suggest that the relatively low levels of concentration were related to and reflected the “open-access order” characteristic of British North America, even in eighteenth-century South Carolina.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01615440.2022.2080134 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:vhimxx:v:56:y:2023:i:1:p:1-17

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/vhim20

DOI: 10.1080/01615440.2022.2080134

Access Statistics for this article

Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History is currently edited by J. David Hacker and Kenneth Sylvester

More articles in Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().