The leading financial centers of the Russian Empire at the end of the nineteenth century according to interregional bank transfers statistics: network and geoinformation aspects

Abstract

The article examines the financial system of the Russian Empire in the form of money flows between the largest centers, implying that these flows were opposite to the flows of goods and services. The resource allocation pattern is thus revealed in aspects of the markets’ geography and hierarchy, which clarifies the capacity of the financial system to support economic growth. The source for this study is the statistics of the commercial transfers of the State Bank of the Russian Empire for 1898 (excluding treasury transfers), processed through network and geoinformation analysis. The study results show that the highest level of the payment network in the financial system topology of the Russian Empire was located around St. Petersburg and Moscow, which indicates a strong centralization of national money flows. To a great degree, Moscow was a nationwide wholesale center for the sale of goods and services, while St. Petersburg developed into the principal center for resource allocation throughout the country, implying various forms of investment in the economy. In such a centralized system, there was no great need for second-level interregional ties. For regional payment networks (the third level, around Odessa, Warsaw, Kiev, Riga, Baku, Nizhniy Novgorod, Kharkov, and Rostov-on-Don), closer and more intensive financial ties are revealed in the west, in the Odessa-Kiev-Warsaw “triangle”, which indicates a greater saturation of the western and southwestern regions with financial resources.