We study the effects of large transportation costs on economic development. Since reliable data for developing countries are hard to come by, we go back in time to the Midwest and the Northeast of the U.S. This is a natural case to study because starting from 1840 decent data is available...

Fifty-eight years ago, Harberger (1954) estimated that the costs of monopoly, which resulted from misallocation of resources across industries, were trivial. Others showed the same was true for tariffs. This research soon led to the consensus that monopoly costs are of little significance—a...