A silver transformation: Chinese monetary integration in times of political disintegration, 1898–1933

This article provides the first systematic econometric study on the evolution of Chinese silver exchange and monetary regimes during the period 1898–1933. Using high‐quality datasets of monthly and daily prices of silver dollars, we apply the threshold autoregressive models to estimate the silver po...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe Economic history review Vol. 73; no. 2; pp. 513 - 539
Main Authors Ma, Debin, Zhao, Liuyan
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Oxford Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.05.2020
Subjects
Economic performance
Narratives
Prices
Transformation
China
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Summary:This article provides the first systematic econometric study on the evolution of Chinese silver exchange and monetary regimes during the period 1898–1933. Using high‐quality datasets of monthly and daily prices of silver dollars, we apply the threshold autoregressive models to estimate the silver points between Shanghai and 18 other cities in northern and central China. We find a noticeable improvement in monetary integration between Shanghai and Tianjin from the 1910s, which then spread to other cities in our sample throughout the 1920s and 1930s. We supplement our analysis with new datasets on volumes and costs of silver flows and with an in‐depth historical narrative. This article re‐evaluates the efficiency of the silver regime and China's economic performance in the Republican era.
Bibliography:We want to thank Olivier Accominotti, Loren Brandt, Zhiwu Chen, David Chilose, Akinobu Kuroda, Dan Li, Dong Lou, James Kung, David Mitch, Hiroaki Morota, Tetsuji Okazaki, Kaixiang Peng, Thomas Rawski, Tomoko Shiroyama, and Masayuki Tanimoto for comments and suggestions. We benefited from comments at seminars and workshops at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Hong Kong University, the London School of Economics, the University of Maryland at Baltimore, the University of Toronto, the University of Tokyo, the Fifth Asian Historical Economics Conference (Seoul, Korea), and the Fifth Annual Quantitative History Workshop (Henan, China). Debin Ma acknowledges support from the School of Economics at Fudan University, Shanghai, China. We are grateful for the comments of the three anonymous referees and the editor of the
Economic History Review
Patrick Wallis. All remaining errors are ours.
ISSN:0013-0117
1468-0289
DOI:10.1111/ehr.12939