Journal of Economic Geography Advance Access originally published online on October 15, 2008
Journal of Economic Geography 2009 9(1):117-136; doi:10.1093/jeg/lbn040
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On the origins of border effects: insights from the Habsburg Empire
*Department of Economic History, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK. email <m.s.schulze{at}lse.ac.uk>
**Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation, The University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, United Kingdom and CEPR, London, UK. email <nikolaus.wolf{at}warwick.ac.uk>
JEL classifications: N13, F15, Z13
What are the origins of border effects on trade and why do borders continue to matter in periods of increasing economic integration? We explore the hypothesis that border effects emerged as a result of asymmetric economic integration in the unique historical setting of the multi-national Habsburg Empire prior to the First World War. While markets tended to integrate mainly due to improved infrastructure, ethno-linguistic networks had persistent trade diverting effects. We find that the political borders which separated the empire's successor states after the First World War became visible in the economy from the mid-1880s onwards, already 25–30 years before the First World War. This effect of a ‘border before a border’ cannot be explained by factors such as administrative barriers, physical geography, changes in infrastructure or patterns of integration with neighbouring regions outside of the Habsburg customs and monetary union. However, controlling for the changing ethno-linguistic composition of the population across the regional capital cities of the empire does explain most of the estimated border effects.
Keywords: border effects, market integration, networks, pre-1914 Europe
Date submitted: 23 October 2007
Date accepted: 17 September 2008