Replication files for Interest Rates, Sanitation Infrastructure, and Mortality Decline in Nineteenth-Century England and Wales

This depository includes the replication package for <i>Interest Rates, Sanitation
Infrastructure, and Mortality Decline in Nineteenth-Century England and Wales, </i><span>to be published in the Journal of Economic History in March 2022. <br><br></span>Abstract: This paper investigates whether high borrowing costs deterred
investment in sanitation infrastructure in late nineteenth-century Britain.
Town councils had to borrow to fund investment, with considerable variation in
interest rates across towns and over time. Panel regressions, using annual data
from more than 800 town councils, indicate that higher interest rates were
associated with lower levels of infrastructure investment between 1887 and
1903. Instrumental variable regressions show that falling interest rates after
1887 stimulated investment and led to lower infant mortality. These findings
suggest that Parliament could have expedited mortality decline by subsidizing
loans or facilitating private borrowing.<br>