Econ Papers Daily / 期刊论文
搭便车的美国佬：加拿大与巴拿马运河
Free-riding Yankees: Canada and the Panama Canal
摘要
We study the impact of the Panama Canal on the development of Canada’s manufacturing sector from 1900 to 1939. Using newly digitized county-level data from the Census of Manufactures and a market-access approach, we exploit the plausibly exogenous nature of this historical episode to study how changes in transportation costs influence the process of structural transformation and manufacturing productivity. Our reduced-form estimates show that lowered shipping costs increased manufacturing employment as a share of the population by increasing the number of manufacturing establishments, though not their average size, capital intensity, or skilled labor share. Manufacturing revenues grew 9% more in counties with market access gains at the 75th percentile, compared to counties with 25th percentile gains. Productivity grew by 13% more. These effects persist when we consider general equilibrium effects: the closure of the Canal in 1939 would result in economic losses equivalent to 1.86% of GDP, chiefly as a by-product of the restriction of the country’s access to international markets. Altogether, these results suggest that the Canal substantially altered the economic geography of the Western Hemisphere in the first half of the twentieth century.
中文摘要
本文研究了1900年至1939年间巴拿马运河对加拿大制造业发展的影响。利用新数字化的县级制造业普查数据及市场可达性方法，我们借助这一历史事件的准外生性特征，探讨运输成本变化如何影响结构转型过程与制造业生产率。简化形式估计表明，航运成本降低通过增加制造业企业数量（而非企业平均规模、资本密集度或熟练劳动力占比）提升了制造业就业人口比重。在市场可达性增益处于第75百分位的县，制造业收入比第25百分位的县多增长9%，生产率多增长13%。考虑一般均衡效应后，这些影响依然存在：1939年运河关闭将导致相当于GDP 1.86%的经济损失，主要源于该国国际市场准入受限的副产品。综上，这些结果表明，运河在20世纪上半叶显著改变了西半球的经济地理格局。