Have Unequal Treaties Fostered Domestic Market Integration in Late Imperial China?

Jean-Louis Combes, Mary-Françoise Renard and Shuo Shi

Chapter 2 in Institutional Change and China Capitalism:Frontier of Cliometrics and its Application to China, 2022, pp 3-29 from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.

Abstract: The objective of this chapter is to study the relationship between international trade openness and domestic market integration in Late Imperial China. More specifically, we focus on a natural experiment, namely the unequal treaties of the second half of the 19th century that lifted the long-existing international trade restriction system. The integration of domestic markets is analyzed while looking at the existence of a long-term common movement in the grain prices between provinces. The econometric results show that trade openness did not lead to better integration of the Chinese domestic grain markets. Our results support the hypothesis according to which long-distance trade has not generated efficiency gains in domestic markets. We evidence a strong segmentation between domestic and international grain markets owing to different traded products and operators.

Keywords: China; Macroeconomics; Cliometrics; Institutional Economics; Complexity; Economics; International Trade; Applied Econometrics; Econometrics; Empirical Finance; Behavioral Finance; Economic History; Sociology; Gender Studies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B1 B2 F10 F15 F4 N15 O11 P1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Related works:
Working Paper: Have Unequal Treaties Fostered Domestic Market Integration in Late Imperial China? (2022)
Working Paper: Have unequal treaties fostered domestic market integration in Late Imperial China ? (2020)
Working Paper: Have unequal treaties fostered domestic market integration in Late Imperial China ? (2020)
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