Business fluctuations in Italy, 1861-1913: The new evidence

Band-pass filters and structural time-series models are applied to the new estimates of Italy’s domestic product from 1861 to 1913. These indicate a strong four-year cycle, derived from the agricultural sector, which curiously (and perhaps spuriously) vanishes after 30 years. Over the longer term GDP and the services reflect the long swing in industrial production, tied to the investment cycle. Agriculture seems marked instead by a further cycle of some 12-15 years, and also by a long wave related to the sector’s terms of trade.     

Resource boom and bust, 1885–1920: regional wealth evidence from probate records

Wealth micro-data from records probated by the Thunder Bay District Surrogate Court for 1885–1920 are examined. These data span the Canadian wheat boom era and find a break in wealth accumulation over the period 1900–1914. A bust follows the boom and real wealth during 1915–1920 is approximately 75% lower than 1910–1914. Regression results show the key determinants of wealth in the region to be time period variables, gender, literacy, occupation, marital status, and number of children. The boom had no long-term impact on individual wealth levels in the Thunder Bay District.     

Living standards and plague in London, 1560–1665

This article uses individual records of 930,000 burials and 630,000 baptisms to reconstruct the spatial and temporal patterns of birth and death in London from 1560 to 1665, a period dominated by recurrent plague. The plagues of 1563, 1603, 1625, and 1665 appear of roughly equal magnitude, with deaths running at five to six times their usual rate, but the impact on wealthier central parishes falls markedly through time. Tracking the weekly spread of plague, we find no evidence that plague emerged first in the docks, and in many cases elevated mortality emerges first in the poor northern suburbs. Looking at the seasonal pattern of mortality, we find that the characteristic autumn spike associated with plague continued into the early 1700s. Natural increase improved as smaller crises disappeared after 1590, but fewer than half of those born survived childhood.     

Storage in medieval England: the evidence from purveyance accounts, 1295–13491

As a contribution to the long‐running debate concerning the extent and motivation of medieval storage, this article uses purveyance accounts to examine such facilities in England prior to the Black Death. Three hundred and fifteen cases of predominantly urban storage were recorded for 97 communities for the products of agriculture purchased by the purveyors, mostly threshed grains. When these 315 cases were analysed using an Excel database, it was found that, in contrast to the often magnificent barns on monastic and other lordly estates, this storage was much smaller and informal, often indistinguishable, it seems, from the domestic storage for families themselves. As modest as it was, however, it likely played an important role in the increasing commercialization of medieval England, even perhaps to the extent of making society at the time more susceptible to subsistence crises.