In a postscript to his Recherches sur la population (1766), political arithmetician Louis Messance made the case for a positive association mortality and the price of wheat. The true author of the postscript was probably Jean-Baptiste Francois de la Michodiere (1720 - 97), Messance's mentor...

This paper analyzes 19th and 20th century data from a well-known chateau in Bordeaux. The dataset includes information on weather conditions, starting dates of three phenological stages of grapevine, prices, and yields. We discuss how these variables have evolved over the last two centuries. We...

type="main" <p>Existing studies find little connection between living standards and mortality in England, but go back only to the sixteenth century. Using new data on inheritances, we extend estimates of mortality back to the mid-thirteenth century and find, by contrast, that deaths from unfree...</p>

type="main" xml:lang="en" <title type="main">ABSTRACT</title> <p>Famine, like poverty, has always been with us. No region and no century has been immune. Its scars — economic, psychological and political — can long outlast its immediate impact on mortality and health. Famines are a hallmark of economic backwardness, and...</p>

Many explanations have been offered for the British Industrial Revolution. This article points to the importance of human capital (broadly defined) and the quality of the British labor force on the eve of the Industrial Revolution. It shows that in terms of both physical quality and mechanical...

This paper reviews recent contributions to the economics and economic history of famine. It provides a context for the history of famine in the twentieth century, which is unique. During the century, war and totalitarianism produced more famine deaths than did overpopulation and economic...