Markets and Famines

Evidence from Nineteenth-Century Finland

Bibliographic Data

ID4986393
AuthorsCormac Ó Gráda (0000-0003-4101-3740, University College Dublin, corresponding author)
Year2001
Volume49
Issue3
Pages575-590
Publication date2001-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueEconomic Development and Cultural Change (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0013-0079 • E-ISSN: 1539-2988
PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/452516
PMID19069306
OpenAlexW2157100441
LanguageEN
Citations received13
References cited9

How markets function during famines is an abiding issue in economics. A tradition extending back at least as far as the French e conomistes of the mid-eighteenth century and reinforced in recent work by Jean Dre `ze and Amartya Sen argues strongly for the power of market forces to prevent famines. In this view, allowing farmers the benefit of free-market prices maximizes the normal harvest, thereby making future poor harvests, defined as proportionate shortfalls from the norm, less disastrous. How markets function during famines is a separate issue, but here too markets have long had their defenders in the economics literature, notably Adam Smith and Edmund Burke. Another more populist tradition argues that, on the contrary, well-functioning markets may exacerbate subsistence crises by allowing monopolists a field day or even by removing food from where there is no purchasing power for food to richer, less affected areas. 1 Versions of this tradition are articulated in fictional accounts of famine such as Alessandro Manzoni's I Promessi Sposi (describing seventeenth-century Lombardy) and William Carleton's The Black Prophet (describing nineteenth-century Ireland). Few economists would argue, like the fictional characters in those works, that markets cause famines. However, some would support a third tradition, which holds that markets may not function well during famines for a variety of reasons. The problem might be one of intertemporal allocation, as when producers miscalculate their prospects and hold back supplies. False hopes of yet higher prices may generate ''bubbles'' in the markets for staple foods. 2 Or the problem could be spatial: local or regional markets might become balkanized because bad weather disrupts communications, because the pressures of ''moral economy'' intervene to prevent food shipments dictated by market forces, or because famine conditions produce ''noisy'' information about fundamentals

Archaeology · Currency · Download · Economic history · Economics · Famine · Political science · Economics of Agriculture and Food Markets · Historical Economic and Social Studies · History

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