Linguistic Distance and Market Integration in India

Abstract

The role of cultural distance in market integration, particularly in the developing world, has received relatively little attention. Using prices from more than 200 South Asian markets spanning 1861 to 1921, we show that linguistic distance correlates negatively with market integration. A one-standard-deviation increase in linguistic distance predicts a reduction in the price correlation between two markets of 0.121 standard deviations for wheat, 0.181 for salt, and 0.088 for rice. While factors like genetic distance, literacy gaps, and railway connections are correlated with linguistic distance, they do not fully explain the correlation between linguistic distance and market integration.