Wagons at work: a transport revolution in the age of agrarian transition in Sweden?

Mats Olsson (), Fredrik Bergenfeldt () and Patrick Svensson
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Fredrik Bergenfeldt: Lund University

No 11018, Working Papers from Economic History Society

Abstract: "The level of transport costs is a central part of economic development and change. Transports costs are dependent on a multitude of factors, such as for example access to and quality of roads, rivers or seas, the transport means used to travel on them, and energy. The purpose of this paper is to investigate one part of the transport costs in preindustrial Europe: the transport means, a somewhat neglected area in previous research on transport costs. More specifically, our aim is to make a comprehensive and disaggregated study of the improvements in the means of transports on roads. We use Scania during the period 1750– 1850 as a case to study the development of transport means during the transformation from a rural economy to an emerging industrial economy. Information from probate records allows us to study quality of horses, the development of wagons and decompose the technical changes. Our results show that peasant farmers made substantial investments in particularly wagons leading to technical improvements and lower transport costs, and that these investments took place regardless of the fact that there was not an institutional change of the road system."

JEL-codes: N00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-04
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