{"title":"Telegraph and capital market integration: Evidence from late imperial China","authors":"Yu Hao, Yuxiang Wang","doi":"10.1111/ehr.70038","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>Exploiting quasi-exogenous variations in the timing of telegraph construction, the reduction of information costs promotes capital market integration in late imperial China. Employing a difference-in-differences strategy, we find that telegraph connection within a prefecture pair reduced the difference in interest rate by 1.27 percentage points. Institutional quality and transportation accessibility complemented telegraph's role in enhancing capital market integration. In addition, financial intermediaries augmented the telegraph's effect on capital market integration. For the traditional banks (<i>piaohao</i>), the augmenting effect was only salient within firm boundaries, suggesting that information was only exchanged within firm-specific networks.</p>","PeriodicalId":47868,"journal":{"name":"Economic History Review","volume":"79 2","pages":"781-810"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6000,"publicationDate":"2026-04-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Economic History Review","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ehr.70038","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2025/8/5 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Exploiting quasi-exogenous variations in the timing of telegraph construction, the reduction of information costs promotes capital market integration in late imperial China. Employing a difference-in-differences strategy, we find that telegraph connection within a prefecture pair reduced the difference in interest rate by 1.27 percentage points. Institutional quality and transportation accessibility complemented telegraph's role in enhancing capital market integration. In addition, financial intermediaries augmented the telegraph's effect on capital market integration. For the traditional banks (piaohao), the augmenting effect was only salient within firm boundaries, suggesting that information was only exchanged within firm-specific networks.
期刊介绍：
The Economic History Review is published quarterly and each volume contains over 800 pages. It is an invaluable source of information and is available free to members of the Economic History Society. Publishing reviews of books, periodicals and information technology, The Review will keep anyone interested in economic and social history abreast of current developments in the subject. It aims at broad coverage of themes of economic and social change, including the intellectual, political and cultural implications of these changes.
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