The period of the study was characterised by major improvements in financial institutions and transport. The objectives of the study were to see how pricing behaviour changed as a result of this. Since the prices are weekly and by county, it is possible to see how seasonality and regional patterns changed over time. Quantifying the effects of these changes should enable us to see their relative importance in promoting economic growth. The general aim of our research has been to increase our understanding of market integration and its effect on economic performance - particularly in the context of financial markets and commodity markets. Our specific objectives were (i) to create a major dataset of eighteenth and nineteenth century grain prices which can be used within our research project and which could also potentially be useful for other researchers; (ii) to estimate an econometric model to quantify the changes in financial markets, especially the spread of country banks (iii) to estimate an econometric model to measure the effects of transport networks; (iv) to use our results from to estimate the social welfare gains from market integration and to relate the improvements in market integration to the major changes in agricultural practice.
