From a common empire to colonial rule: commodity market disintegration in the Near East

Abstract

This paper investigates the impact of the disruption of the Ottoman Empire on the integration of regional and colonial commodity markets in the Near East during 1923-1939. Exploiting a novel dataset on quarterly wholesale prices in interwar Syria, Egypt, Turkey, France and the UK, it tests for cointegration and quantifies the magnitude and speed of price convergence across markets using VECMs. The results indicate that while regional market disintegrated, colonial market linkages strengthened, despite the anti-global environment of the interwar era.