Cleaving Panama, Shrinking the World: The Economic Impact of the Panama Canal, 1903–37

The Panama Canal was one of the largest public investments of its time. In the first decade of its operation, the canal produced significant social returns for the United States. Most of these returns were due to the transportation of petroleum from California to the East Coast. The United States captured most of these returns by leveraging the threat of military force to obtain a much better deal from the Panamanian government than it could have negotiated otherwise.