Commodity market integration 1850–1913: Evidence from Britain and Germany

Abstract

In a sample that contains annual prices of 39 selected commodities in Britain and Germany in the period 1850 to 1913, substantial evidence of well integrated commodity markets is found. The degree of integration is not universal across markets and varies over time, however. Absolute price variability was in general decreasing over the period, indicating more closely integrated markets. But the reintroduction of tariffs in Germany beginning in 1879 implied that this trend was broken for a number of agricultural commodities. With the exception of animal foodstuffs, which were affected by non-tariff barriers, most price series are cointegrated. The speed of adjustments of prices, measured by estimates of the half-life of Law of One Price (LOP) deviations, is often in the range of 1 to 1.5 years, which is lower than that found in many other studies of market integration.