Full Citation

Title: Economic Geography Aspects of the Panama Canal

Citation Type: Working Paper

Publication Year: 2019

ISBN:

ISSN: 2042-2695

DOI:

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Abstract: This paper studies how the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914 changed market access and influenced the economic geography of the United States. We compute shipment distances with and without the canal from each US county to each other US county and to key international ports and compute the resulting change in market access. We relate this change to population changes in 20-year intervals from 1880 to 2000. We find that a 1 percent increase in market access led to a total increase of population by around 6 percent. We compute similar elasticities for wages, land values and immigration from out of state. When we decompose the effect by industry, we find that tradable (manufacturing) industries react faster than nontradable (services), with a fairly similar aggregate effect.

Url: http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp1633.pdf

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Authors: Maurer, Stephan, E; Rauch, Ferdinand

Series Title: Centre for Economic Performance Discussion Paper

Publication Number: 1633

Institution: London School of Economics and Political Science

Pages: 1-46

Publisher Location: London

Data Collections: IPUMS USA, IPUMS NHGIS

Topics: Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Migration and Immigration, Other

Countries: United Kingdom