摘要：This paper asks whether Germany was ever an economically integrated area. I
explore the geography of trade costs in a new data set of about 40,000
observations on regional trade flows within and across the borders of Germany
over the period 1885 – 1933. There are three key results. First, the German
Empire before 1914 was a poorly integrated economy, both relative to integration
across the borders of the German state and internally. Second, this internal
fragmentation had its origins in administrative borders within Germany, in a
geographical barrier that divided Germany roughly along natural trade routes
into east and west, and in a considerable cultural heterogeneity within Germany
prior to 1919. Third, internal integration improved along with external
disintegration in the wake of the war, partly due to border changes along the
lines of ethno-linguistic heterogeneity and again with the Great Depression. By
the end of the Weimar Republic in 1933, Germany was reasonably well integrated
