The four articles contained in this issue were submitted independently and at different times to our Journal. They have been independently accepted as a result of the standard refereeing process. We have decided to publish them together, as a quasi-Special Issue, since they all deal in different ways with the thriving subject of market integration. Three articles use price data to explore commodity market integration, focusing on a variety of commodities and using different methodologies. The fourth article broadens the perspective to the market for factors, considering the determinants of internal migrations in Spain.

Over the first half of the nineteenth century, the Prussian-German customs union known as the Zollverein gradually unified a scattered confederation of sovereign states under an internal free trade agreement. This article uses grain prices to quantify the differential effect of the Zollverein for market integration among Zollverein members versus European powers that were not part of the Zollverein, including France, Switzerland, and the Habsburg Empire of Austria. Overall, this border effect is consistently and substantially less than border effect estimates from contemporary samples. For the 1834 liberalisation round, the implied border effect, calculated as the implied decrease in distance that comes about as the result of the customs border being eliminated, is between 140 and 160 kilometres, with the smaller distance for non-German speaking cities, and the larger distance for German–speaking cities. Thus, common language in this sample provides an additional benefit of lowering trade barriers by 11–15 percent in distance, making border elimination more valuable among German-speaking cities than for mixed-language-speaking cities. The article offers a few reasons for why I estimate smaller border effects than are found in studies on twentieth century economies, and the analysis gives a new historical perspective on what drives trade costs and changes in market integration.

In a sample that contains annual prices of 39 selected commodities in Britain and Germany in the period 1850 to 1913, substantial evidence of well integrated commodity markets is found. The degree of integration is not universal across markets and varies over time, however. Absolute price variability was in general decreasing over the period, indicating more closely integrated markets. But the reintroduction of tariffs in Germany beginning in 1879 implied that this trend was broken for a number of agricultural commodities. With the exception of animal foodstuffs, which were affected by non-tariff barriers, most price series are cointegrated. The speed of adjustments of prices, measured by estimates of the half-life of Law of One Price (LOP) deviations, is often in the range of 1 to 1.5 years, which is lower than that found in many other studies of market integration.

In this article we study the issue of cross-border economic integration in the context of Poland’s reunification from 1919. We find that the Polish interwar economy can be regarded as integrated with some restrictions. Moreover, a significant negative impact of the former partition borders on the integration level in the early 1920s vanishes in the middle of the 1920s. This suggests that the post-reunification integration was surprisingly successful. The degree of integration is comparable to that of 19th century France.

Industrialisation in European countries caused an increase in both internal migration and emigration. Internal migrants were even more numerous than overseas emigrants. However, few empirical studies have sought to explain internal migrations. This article examines the causes and effects of internal migration in Spain with the aim of answering some of the questions debated in the literature. The results show that internal migrations in Spain were driven by economic forces. Moreover, the lag in rural population transfer can be explained by the scant pull of industrial and urban destinations. The article also shows that internal migrants differed in some respects from the people who emigrated overseas. Finally, the impact of internal migration on labour markets is measured.

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