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The Irish grain trade from the Famine to the First World War
Author(s) -
Brunt Liam,
Can Edmund
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
the economic history review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.014
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1468-0289
pISSN - 0013-0117
DOI - 10.1111/j.0013-0017.2004.00272.x
Subject(s) - irish , famine , consumption (sociology) , index (typography) , economics , agricultural economics , wage , economic history , economy , geography , labour economics , archaeology , sociology , social science , philosophy , linguistics , world wide web , computer science
This article presents the first consistent and continuous data series for the Irish grain trade, 1840‐1914, showing that imports of wheat and maize rose massively. The resulting three‐fold increase in Irish per caput wheat consumption occurred mostly before 1875 and brought it close to British levels by 1914. A consumer price index is constructed for the period, and it reveals that prices declined until 1900 and rose thereafter. Using the two new series (per caput wheat consumption and the price index), the authors estimate a demand function for wheat and show that the per caput increase was due to the rise in the real wage.