Differences in silver prices across temporal and spatial dimensions: silver pricing and determinants of local prices in the 19th-20th century

Absztrakt (kivonat)

The paper has a twofold purpose: first to introduce a database of local silver prices and silver production collected from multiple sources, covering multiple countries in the 19th and 20th century. The paper describes the data sources and methods used in the compilation of the dataset in order to support similar research efforts in economic history and to enable the use of the dataset for further analysis. The second goal is to investigate the collected data in relation with the effect of local characteristics on prices and whether the price of this widely traded commodity shows a convergence due to the growing impact of international trade. Based on the data the paper argues that despite a convergence of silver prices in the 16th-17th century, described in the literature, prices were still affected by local environment in the 19th and 20th century and therefore a convergence of prices was not fully reached.