Date of Award
8-2025
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Economics
Committee Chair/Advisor
Howard Bodenhorn
Committee Member
Robert Fleck
Committee Member
Jonathan Leganza
Committee Member
Michael Makowsky
Abstract
This dissertation consists of three essays in economic history, unified by a focus on one of America's earliest transportation infrastructures, the canal system, in nineteenth-century New York. Each chapter explores a different aspect of the state's transformation: its economy, politics, and finance, each of which helped construct New York as the Empire State.
The first chapter studies the economic impact of canals on economic modernization from three aspects: sectoral transition, urbanization, and banking development. Contrary to much of the modern literature finds transportation infrastructure leads to decentralization, I find the opposite-evidence of centralization. Specially: (1) canal towns experienced a transition in employment from agriculture to manufacturing and commerce, with larger manufacturing mills and more commercial activities; (2) canals promoted long-term population growth in existing towns and the formation of new towns; (3) canals encouraged the entry of new banks and increased bank size in canal towns; and (4) the geographic influence of the canal is limited in terms of employment and population growth.
The second chapter studies the political impact of canals on regional voting patterns, using this context to explore how transportation-induced changes influence voter behavior. I find that votes for anti-Jacksonians (left-wing) were higher in areas closer to canals. Two main factors explain this pattern: (1) transportation improvement transformed the local economy and labor force, as the rising manufacturing and commercial workers in canal towns became ideologically and economically aligned with anti-Jacksonians; and (2) social movements reinforced these political alignments through information dissemination by newspapers in canal towns.
The third chapter, co-authored with Howard Bodenhorn, studies the evolution and consequences of bank-borrower relationships using a new dataset of 55,000 loans issued to 10,000 unique borrowers over 35 years in mid-nineteenth-century New York. We estimate the effects of a marginal increase in relationship strength, length, and exclusivity. We find that: (1) long-term, exclusive relationships enabled borrowers to access larger loans at modestly lower rates and with less collateral security; (2) banks acted on proprietary borrower information early in the relationship; (3) these long-term relationships continued to benefit borrowers in obtaining relatively larger loans even after default.
Recommended Citation
Xing, Youwei, "Constructing a State: Canals and the Transformation of the Economy, Politics, and Finance in Nineteenth-Century New York" (2025). All Dissertations. 4079.
https://open.clemson.edu/all_dissertations/4079
Author ORCID Identifier
0000-0002-1207-8097
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