How much do we know about market integration in Europe?¹

Abstract

The literature on commodity market integration has boomed in the last 15 years, and a sort of consensus is slowly emerging, at least with regard to trends in the last two centuries. This article argues that this consensus is fragile because the research is haunted by serious methodological shortcomings. The results are not really comparable because authors use a bewildering array of statistical techniques, without bothering too much about their assumptions and, more generally, about the theoretical foundations of their work. Market integration is a multi-faceted process and available techniques can be classified according to the issues they are suitable to tackle. In other words, the methodological choices, together with the available data, have steered the research towards a quite narrow set of issues. Thus we know much less than we suppose. The final section sketches out a research agenda beyond pure measurement.

Price shocks in regional markets: Japan's Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923

“…This literature cannot be listed in any comprehensive way here, but our approach has been particularly informed by the following: Federico, ‘How much do we know?’; Ejrnaes and Persson, ‘Gains’; Fackler and Goodwin, ‘Spatial price analysis’.…”

Improvement of scientific conceptual paradigms of market development in conditions of economic globalization

“…However, current conditions have need of extension of the classical approach, it must be complemented by global aspect of the market. Globalization approach can be seen in the works [7][8][9][10]. Scientists consider the market on a global scale, but it does not take into account the industry, especially the development of the market.…”

West versus Far East: early globalization and the great divergence

“…Not randomly, the provinces in which the grain tribute was collected for spatial redistribution-Henan, Shandong, Jiangsu, Anhui, Zhejiang, Hubei, Hunan, and Jianxi (Will 282, p. 282)-belong to the two mentioned Chinese regions.32 Federico (2011Federico ( , 2012,Uebele (2011), andChilosi et al (2013) may be cited among the most recent literature on this issue.…”