Prices and Wages in Ireland, 1700-1850

The article presents primary research on rural wages and the prices of agricultural goods and draws conclusions concerning the trend in the living conditions of rural workers in the century before the Great Irish Famine of 1845-1850.

Harvest Shortfalls, Grain prices, and Famines in Preindustrial England

The frequency of bad harvests and price elasticity of demand are measured using new data on English grain yields 1268–1480 and 1750–1850 and a revised price series. The analysis shows that major harvest shortfalls were a significant component of most historical subsistence crises, as back-to-back shortfalls were of the worst famines. Although serious harvest shortfalls long remained an unavoidable fact of economic life, by c.1800 yields had become less variable and prices less harvest sensitive. By the eve of the Industrial Revolution, England had become effectively famine-free.

What Moved Share Prices in the Nineteenth-Century London Stock Market?

Using a new weekly blue-chip index, this paper investigates the causes of stock price movements on the London market between 1823 and 1870. We find that economic fundamentals explain about 15 per cent of weekly and 34 per cent of monthly variation in share prices. Contemporary press reporting from the London Stock Exchange is used to ascertain what market participants thought were causing the largest movements on the market. The vast majority of large movements were attributed by the press to geopolitical, monetary, railway-sector, and financial-crisis news. Investigating the stock price changes on an independent list of events reaffirms these findings, suggesting that the most important specific events which moved markets were wars involving European powers.

Tracking the invasive history of the green alga Codium fragile ssp. tomentosoides

The spread of nonindigenous species into new habitats is having a drastic effect on natural ecosystems and represents an increasing threat to global biodiversity. In the marine environment, where data on the movement of invasive species is scarce, the spread of alien seaweeds represents a particular problem. We have employed a combination of plastid microsatellite markers and DNA sequence data from three regions of the plastid genome to trace the invasive history of the green alga Codium fragile ssp. tomentosoides. Extremely low levels of genetic variation were detected, with only four haplotypes present in the species’ native range in Japan and only two of these found in introduced populations. These invasive populations displayed a high level of geographical structuring of haplotypes, with one haplotype localized in the Mediterranean and the other found in Northwest Atlantic, northern European and South Pacific populations. Consequently, we postulate that there have been at least two separate introductions of C. fragile ssp. tomentosoides from its native range in the North Pacific.