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Prices: sources, problems, solutions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2023

Peter M. Solar
Peter M. Solar*
Affiliation:
CEREC, Université Saint-Louis – Bruxelles and University of Oxford
*
Peter M. Solar, CEREC, Université Saint-Louis – Bruxelles, 89 rue Jean-Baptiste Colyns, 1050 Brussels, Belgium, email: [email protected].
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Abstract

Price currents and newspapers are major sources of information on prices during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but drawing conclusions about trends and fluctuations in values from the quotations in these sources poses several recurrent difficulties. After discussing the origins of the prices in these sources, we use a range of examples, mainly involving commodity prices, to illustrate important problems in working with historical price data. These include missing observations and price inertia, varying gaps between low and high price quotations, and the splicing together of price series from different sources or for different commodity qualities. The last two problems often arise from changes over time in the detail with which prices for heterogeneous commodities were reported.

Keywords

price currentsmissing observationsprice inertiaquality variation

JEL classification

E30: General N01: Development of the Discipline: Historiographical; Sources and Methods B41: Economic Methodology
Type
Article
Information
Financial History Review , Volume 29 , Special Issue 3: Special issue on stock exchange price currents, financial information and market transparency , December 2022 , pp. 287 - 309
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the European Association for Banking and Financial History

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Footnotes

I am grateful for comments on earlier drafts to Joost Joncker, Jan Tore Klovland, Cormac Ó Gráda, Jan Luiten van Zanden and participants in workshops on ‘Price Currents, Financial Information and Market Transparency’ held in Amsterdam in November 2020 and September 2021. The comments of the Review's referee were particularly insightful.

References

Sources

Newspapers (London, unless otherwise indicated)Google Scholar
Atlas (Boston)Google Scholar
Belfast NewsletterGoogle Scholar
Boston CourierGoogle Scholar
Daily AdvertiserGoogle Scholar
The GrocerGoogle Scholar
London Mercantile Price CurrentGoogle Scholar
London New Price CurrentGoogle Scholar
Manchester CourierGoogle Scholar
Prince's London Price CurrentGoogle Scholar
United Kingdom Parliamentary PapersGoogle Scholar
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1886 lxvi (4761), Consular Reports, ‘Sicily for the year 1885’.Google Scholar
1888 ci (5252-172), Consular Reports, ‘Palermo for the year 1887’.Google Scholar
1903 lxviii (321), Wholesale and Retail Prices.Google Scholar

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