Overview of the published articles (as a whole)

Also see article by article summaries here.

      Some of the results of research conducted for and used in the Business of Transatlantic Migration book are developed in greater detail in separate articles (all listed here). The “Cartels” article, for example, explicates shipping conferences as a defense against fare wars due to the high fixed costs and mobile assets associated with the transport of volatile and price-insensitive migration volumes. The most complete and consistent series of North Atlantic steerage fares is presented in “Abstracts,” and the trends of fares, other migration costs and low-skilled U.S. wage rates in “Networks.” How and why the companies used ongoing cost savings from technological improvements to provide more on-board space rather than reduced ticket prices is discussed in “Transportation Revolution.” Doing so for both migrant and non-migrant passengers, but with a bias favoring the latter, as part of well-organized strategies to limit and manage excess carrying capacity, is described in “Capacity” and “Conditions.”

     Other related articles provide in-depth treatment of more particular issues and episodes. “Repeat” shows how inconsistencies in migration statistics can be corrected for using shipping passenger data, “Fare War” shows how unusually low steerage prices in 1904 affected the routing and frequency of back-and-forth movement much more than overall migrant numbers, and “1908” calculates the impact of the U.S. recession that year on eastward flows back to Europe. Interested readers are advised to consult the published versions of these various articles rather than early working papers or conference presentations.