Capital Mobility and Financial Integration in Antebellum America

Abstract

Studies of postbellum financial markets have shown that the United States was not served by an integrated short-term capital market until the turn of the twentieth century. Until recently the data necessary for the study of a similar phenomenon in the antebellum period have not been available. This article reports several new regional interest rate series for the antebellum era that show that antebellum credit markets were more integrated than postbellum markets.