Abstract:This paper presents the first price index for any region of Canada that spans from the colonial era to the mid‐19th century. I constructed it using prices from the account books of religious congregations with estates throughout modern‐day Quebec. It represents a substantial improvement over previous indexes thanks to the consistent price quotations in the source material, the high frequency of observations for many goods, the vast number of goods and the inclusion of numerous non‐agricultural and non‐food goo… Show more
“…A corollary of this is that there is also a need to explain what made Quebec stand out. Cliometric efforts have unearthed considerable economic information about Quebec between the late 17th and late 18th centuries (Altman, ; Geloso, , ). Interestingly, this has unlocked the possibility of studying the role of institutions.…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…In addition, in column 87, enumerators were asked to report “average price of wheat in every such place since last harvest,” which provides us with the option of deflating wages by local prices (i.e., daily “grain wages”) in a way that permits a real‐wage comparison as opposed to a nominal‐wage comparison. This ability to deflate using prices is particularly important because historians emphasize that prices for staple goods in Canada West were below those of Canada East (McCalla, :336–41; Ouellet, Hamelin, and Chabot, ; Geloso, ). Accounting for these price differences is thus also important.…”
Section: The Censuses Of 1842 and Comparison Of Lower And Upper Canadamentioning
confidence: 99%
“…The third line of Table shows that prices in Lower Canada were 1.13 times above those of Upper Canada throughout the period from 1842 to 1851. The fourth line of Table takes the two sets of expenditure weights used by Geloso () to create a Canadian price index that covers the period from 1688 to 1850 to weight those differences. This is meant to reflect the importance of certain consumer items (more details in Online Appendix).…”
Section: The Censuses Of 1842 and Comparison Of Lower And Upper Canadamentioning
This article uses the censuses of 1842 of Canada East (modern‐day Quebec) and Canada West (modern‐day Ontario) to help explain the historical differences in living standards between Canada and the United States. The wage and price data contained in the censuses suggest a gap of 42 percent between Canada East and Canada West. We argue that Canada East was substantially poorer than the rest of Canada and, as it represented such a large proportion of the total population of the initial four Canadian provinces (over 35 percent), that relative poverty weighed heavily in determining the extent of differences in living standards between Canada and the United States. These findings change the perspective on the roots of the differences between the two countries. We propose that any research agenda trying to explain those differences should focus heavily on Quebec.
“…A corollary of this is that there is also a need to explain what made Quebec stand out. Cliometric efforts have unearthed considerable economic information about Quebec between the late 17th and late 18th centuries (Altman, ; Geloso, , ). Interestingly, this has unlocked the possibility of studying the role of institutions.…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…In addition, in column 87, enumerators were asked to report “average price of wheat in every such place since last harvest,” which provides us with the option of deflating wages by local prices (i.e., daily “grain wages”) in a way that permits a real‐wage comparison as opposed to a nominal‐wage comparison. This ability to deflate using prices is particularly important because historians emphasize that prices for staple goods in Canada West were below those of Canada East (McCalla, :336–41; Ouellet, Hamelin, and Chabot, ; Geloso, ). Accounting for these price differences is thus also important.…”
Section: The Censuses Of 1842 and Comparison Of Lower And Upper Canadamentioning
confidence: 99%
“…The third line of Table shows that prices in Lower Canada were 1.13 times above those of Upper Canada throughout the period from 1842 to 1851. The fourth line of Table takes the two sets of expenditure weights used by Geloso () to create a Canadian price index that covers the period from 1688 to 1850 to weight those differences. This is meant to reflect the importance of certain consumer items (more details in Online Appendix).…”
Section: The Censuses Of 1842 and Comparison Of Lower And Upper Canadamentioning
This article uses the censuses of 1842 of Canada East (modern‐day Quebec) and Canada West (modern‐day Ontario) to help explain the historical differences in living standards between Canada and the United States. The wage and price data contained in the censuses suggest a gap of 42 percent between Canada East and Canada West. We argue that Canada East was substantially poorer than the rest of Canada and, as it represented such a large proportion of the total population of the initial four Canadian provinces (over 35 percent), that relative poverty weighed heavily in determining the extent of differences in living standards between Canada and the United States. These findings change the perspective on the roots of the differences between the two countries. We propose that any research agenda trying to explain those differences should focus heavily on Quebec.
“… Figure 3. Exports of Wheat and Flour from Lower and Upper Canada, in Bushels per Capita (A-axis) and Pounds Sterling per Capita (B-axis). Source: Vallières and Desloges (2008); Geloso (2019); Aubry (1970); Public Archives of Canada (1874). Note: The statistics on exports do not include the exports to the US after 1784.…”
Section: Canada In the North Atlantic Wheat Tradementioning
confidence: 99%
“…We gather the available evidence on Canadian trade with the US and the UK and find that Canadian farmers exported appreciable amounts of wheat to the American colonies as well as the UK from the late eighteenth century. We then look for market integration using the price series for the US and the UK from Sharp and Weisdorf (2013), as well as new price series for the British colonies of Lower and Upper Canada from 1760 to 1858 (Geloso 2019). We first conduct variance analysis following Federico (2011, 2012) and then measure market integration by estimating a cointegrated VAR model (CVAR), following Sharp and Weisdorf (2013).…”
Wheat market integration between the US and the UK before the “first era of globalization” (in the second half of the nineteenth century) was frequently interrupted by policy and “exogenous” events such as wars. This paper adds Canada to this story by looking at trade and price data, as well as contemporary debates. This allows us to triangulate the role of policy and wars, since Canada as a small open economy was part of the British Empire. We find that, despite its privileged access to British markets, Canada faced similar barriers to the US, suggesting that membership of the British Empire provided only a modest benefit to trade. We also describe the limitations she faced accessing the US market, in particular after American independence.
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