This paper shows that railroad building in Russia, as in Europe and the US in the nineteenth century, improved the value of land, a classic benefit of transportation investment in largely agrarian countries. From a database constructed for this paper, we use cross-sectional data for the fifty European Russian regions to show the association of the length of the railroad (measured in 1894), land prices (measured in 1900) and annual growth of land prices (in rubles) for 1885-1910.

The "dta" database, compiled by Maria Karpenko and Roman Konchakov at the Center for Russian Studies, the Russian Presidential Academy of the National Economy and Public Administration, 2014-2019, links the following sources by town (in chronological order):

Statisticheskie tablitsi o sostoianii gorodov Rossiiskoi imperii. 1840 (statisticheskie dannie za 1840 g.) [Statistics on the state of towns in the Russian Empire, 1840 (data for 1840)]. St Petersburg: Council of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, tipog. K. Kraia, 1840.

Statisticheskie tablitsi o sostoianii gorodov Rossiskoi imperii. 1852 (po 1 maia 1847 goda) [Statistics on the state of towns in the Russian Empire, 1852 (data are recorded on 1 May 1847)], compiled by the Council of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, St Petersburg: tipograf. Ministry of Internal Affairs, 1852.

Ekonomicheskoe sostoianie gorodov za 1870 g. (dannie po naseleniiu otnosiatsia k 1870 godu. sredneie chislo gorodskikh dokhodov ukazano za 3 goda: s 1868-1870. nalogi na nedvizhimoe imushchestvo za 1871 g.) [The economic state of towns for 1870 (population data for 1870, average city revenue over three years, 1867-1870, real estate tax for 1871)], Statisticheskii vremennik Rossiiskoi imperii. Nalichnoe naseleniie Imperii za 1870 g. Vypusk X/ obr. L. Karachunskii. [Current statistics of the Russian Empire, Population of the Empire for 1870, Issue X, by L. Karachunskii], St Petersburg: Tipog. V. Bezobrazova and Co., 1875.

Statistika Rossiiskoi Imperii. I. Sbornik svedenii po Rossii za 1884-1885 gg. [Statistics of the Russian Empire. I. Collection of information on Russia for 1884-1885]. St. Petersburg: Central Statistical Committee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, 1887.

Pervaia Vseobshchaia perepis’ naseleniia Rossiiskoi imperii 1897 goda [First General Census of the Russian Empire in 1897].Ed. N. A. Troinitskii, St. Petersburg, 1897-1905.

Goroda Rossii v 1904 godu. 1906 (statistika za 1904 god) [Towns of Russia in 1904, 1906 (data for 1904)] Central Statistical Committee, Ministry of Internal Affairs: tipog Nyrkina, 1906-1914.

            Other Data Source:

Koval'chenko I.D., and Borodkin L.I. (1988). Two paths of bourgeois agrarian evolution in European Russia: An essay in multivariate analysis. The Russian Review, 47, 391-408.

Variable names are uploaded with datafile.