IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mcl/mclwop/2006-09.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Costs Of Doing Hard Time: A Penitentiary-Based Regional Price Index For Canada, 1883-1923

Author

Listed:
  • Chris Minns

    ()

  • Mary MacKinnon

    ()

Abstract

We construct consumer price indices for Canada, mainly based on the expenditure records of Canada's federal penitentiaries. Regional price variation was much greater in Canada in the late nineteenth century than in the northern U.S. The new data suggest substantial price decline to 1900. Regional price variation in Canada decreased gradually to 1914, and quickly during the First World War. For 1900-14 and 1922-3, new data are largely consistent with consumer price data compiled by The Labour Gazette. The new data suggest more inflation during the First World War.

Suggested Citation

  • Chris Minns & Mary MacKinnon, 2006. "The Costs Of Doing Hard Time: A Penitentiary-Based Regional Price Index For Canada, 1883-1923," Departmental Working Papers 2006-09, McGill University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:mcl:mclwop:2006-09
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.mcgill.ca/files/economics/Mary20062.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lloyd G. Reynolds, 1938. "The Canadian Baking Industry: A Study of an Imperfect Market," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 52(4), pages 659-678.
    2. Allen, Robert C., 2001. "The Great Divergence in European Wages and Prices from the Middle Ages to the First World War," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 38(4), pages 411-447, October.
    3. Michael R. Haines, 1989. "A State and Local Consumer Price Index for the United States in 1890," NBER Historical Working Papers 0002, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ross D. Hickey & David S. Jacks, 2011. "Nominal rigidities and retail price dispersion in Canada over the twentieth century," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 44(3), pages 749-780, August.
    2. Kris Inwood & Chris Minns & Mary MacKinnon, 2010. "Labour market dynamics in Canada, 1891-1911: A first look from new census samples," Working Papers 1014, University of Guelph, Department of Economics and Finance.
    3. Kris Inwood & Chris Minns & Fraser Summerfield, 2016. "Reverse assimilation? Immigrants in the Canadian labour market during the Great Depression," European Review of Economic History, Oxford University Press, vol. 20(3), pages 299-321.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mcl:mclwop:2006-09. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Shama Rangwala). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/demcgca.html .

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.