This paper evaluates a well-known approach from the economic history literature that uses grain prices to shed light on interest rates. Although this method has been applied in influential work starting with McCloskey and Nash (Am Econ Rev 74:174–187, 1984) and has potentially wide applicability in situations where interest rates are not available, this paper provides the first analysis of how well the storage cost approach captures actual capital market performance on a number of different dimensions. Using matched data on bank interest rates and grain prices for early 19th century U.S. regions, we find that the storage cost approach is useful for quantifying the performance of capital markets. The storage cost approach captures well regional differences in market performance implied by bank rates data, in terms of both the average interest rates and capital market integration. Moreover, the results are stronger than interest rate figures derived from the bills of exchange rates. The paper also assesses the storage cost approach’s robustness to measurement error, incomplete information, outliers, and other factors.

中文翻译：

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资本市场和谷物价格：评估存储成本方法

本文对经济史文献中的一种著名方法进行了评估，该方法使用谷物价格来揭示利率。尽管此方法已从McCloskey和Nash（Am Econ Rev 74：174-187，1984）开始应用于有影响力的工作中，并且在没有利率的情况下具有潜在的广泛适用性，但本文还是对利率的好坏进行了首次分析。存储成本方法可从多个不同维度获取实际的资本市场表现。使用有关19世纪初美国地区银行利率和谷物价格的匹配数据，我们发现存储成本方法对于量化资本市场的绩效很有用。存储成本方法可以很好地捕捉银行汇率数据所暗示的市场表现的区域差异，在平均利率和资本市场一体化方面。而且，结果要比从汇率表得出的利率数字强。本文还评估了存储成本方法对测量误差，信息不完整，离群值和其他因素的鲁棒性。