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, yet the twentieth century suffered some of...

How markets perform during famines has long been a contentious issue. Recent research tends to associate famine with market segmentation and hoarding. The evidence of this paper, based on an analysis of the spatial and temporal patterns of price movements during four famines in preindustrial...

Ireland’s relatively late and feeble fertility transition remains poorly-understood. The leading explanations stress the role of Catholicism and a conservative social ethos. Previous studies rely on evidence that is not sufficient to support firm conclusions. This paper reports the first...

Research linking food prices and excess mortality has a long history in applied economics and economic history. It goes back to 1766, when Jean-Baptiste de la Michodière was the first to use empirical data to argue for a positive association between wheat prices and mortality. Here La...