IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/27866.html

Revolutionary change and structural breaks: A time series analysis of wages and commodity prices in Britain 1264-1913

Author

Listed:
  • Casson, Catherine
  • Fry, J. M.

Abstract

In this paper we empirically test the hypothesis that economic revolutions are associated with structural breaks in historical economic data. A simple test for structural breaks in economic time series is applied to British wage and price data from the medieval to the modern period. Evidence for structural change is found in nearly half of the series studied -- suggesting that structural breaks are an intrinsic feature of such historic data. Structural changes are most closely linked to the Commercial Revolution followed by the Agricultural Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, with changes linked to an underlying process of price stabilisation as measured by a decrease in the long-term level of volatility.

Suggested Citation

  • Casson, Catherine & Fry, J. M., 2011. "Revolutionary change and structural breaks: A time series analysis of wages and commodity prices in Britain 1264-1913," MPRA Paper 27866, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:27866
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/27866/1/MPRA_paper_27866.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rossana, Robert J & Seater, John J, 1992. "Aggregation, Unit Roots and the Time Series Structure on Manufacturing Real Wages," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 33(1), pages 159-179, February.
    2. Adrian R. Bell & Chris Brooks & Tony Moore, 2008. "Interest in medieval accounts: Examples from England, 1272-1340," ICMA Centre Discussion Papers in Finance icma-dp2008-07, Henley Business School, University of Reading.
    3. Munro, John H., 2002. "The medieval origins of the 'Financial Revolution': usury, rentes, and negotiablity," MPRA Paper 10925, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Sep 2002.
    4. Harley, C. Knick & Crafts, N.F.R., 2000. "Simulating the Two Views of the British Industrial Revolution," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 60(3), pages 819-841, September.
    5. Zeileis, Achim & Kleiber, Christian & Kramer, Walter & Hornik, Kurt, 2003. "Testing and dating of structural changes in practice," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 44(1-2), pages 109-123, October.
    6. Maxine Berg & Pat Hudson, 1992. "Rehabilitating the industrial revolution," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 45(1), pages 24-50, February.
    7. Stacie Beck, 2001. "Autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity in commodity spot prices," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 16(2), pages 115-132.
    8. Jushan Bai & Pierre Perron, 2003. "Computation and analysis of multiple structural change models," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(1), pages 1-22.
    9. Angus Deaton & Guy Laroque, 1992. "On the Behaviour of Commodity Prices," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 59(1), pages 1-23.
    10. Dabin Wang & William G. Tomek, 2007. "Commodity Prices and Unit Root Tests," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 89(4), pages 873-889.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Casson, Catherine & Fry, J. M. & Casson, Mark, 2011. "Evolution or revolution? a study of price and wage volatility in England, 1200-1900," MPRA Paper 31518, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Carraro, Alessandro & Stefani, Gianluca, 2011. "Price Transmission in Three Italian Food Chains: A Structural Break Approach," 2011 International Congress, August 30-September 2, 2011, Zurich, Switzerland 114317, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    3. Fry, J. M. & Masood, Omar, 2011. "Testable implications of economic revolutions: An application to historic data on European wages," MPRA Paper 32812, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Eskandar Elmarzougui & Bruno Larue, 2013. "On the Evolving Relationship Between Corn and Oil Prices," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(3), pages 344-360, June.
    5. Melone, Alessandro & Randl, Otto & Sögner, Leopold & Zechner, Josef, 2025. "Stock-Oil Comovement: Cash Flows or Discount Rates?," VfS Annual Conference 2025 (Cologne): Revival of Industrial Policy 325398, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    6. Chang, Bi-Juan & Hung, Mao-Wei, 2021. "Corporate debt and cash decisions: A nonlinear panel data analysis," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 15-37.
    7. Nicola, Francesca de & De Pace, Pierangelo & Hernandez, Manuel A., 2016. "Co-movement of major energy, agricultural, and food commodity price returns: A time-series assessment," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 28-41.
    8. Fan, Ying & Xu, Jin-Hua, 2011. "What has driven oil prices since 2000? A structural change perspective," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(6), pages 1082-1094.
    9. Patrik Nosil & Zachariah Gompert & Daniel J. Funk, 2024. "Divergent dynamics of sexual and habitat isolation at the transition between stick insect populations and species," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-15, December.
    10. Nicolas Legrand, 2019. "The Empirical Merit Of Structural Explanations Of Commodity Price Volatility: Review And Perspectives," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(2), pages 639-664, April.
    11. Joscha Beckmann & Ansgar Belke & Michael Kühl, 2009. "How Stable Are Monetary Models of the Dollar-Euro Exchange Rate?: A Time-Varying Coefficient Approach," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 944, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    12. Jose PINEDA & Rodolfo MÉNDEZ, 2009. "Fiscal Sustainability and Economic Growth in Bolivia," EcoMod2009 21500075, EcoMod.
    13. Addona Vittorio & Yates Philip A, 2010. "A Closer Look at the Relative Age Effect in the National Hockey League," Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, De Gruyter, vol. 6(4), pages 1-19, October.
    14. Dannemann, Tebbe & Prehn, Soren & Brümmer, Bernhard, 2014. "Optionshandel Und Maispreisvolatilitat: Does the Tail Wag the Dog?," 54th Annual Conference, Goettingen, Germany, September 17-19, 2014 187371, German Association of Agricultural Economists (GEWISOLA).
    15. Chad E. Hart & Sergio H. Lence & Dermot J. Hayes & Na Jin, 2016. "Price Mean Reversion, Seasonality, and Options Markets," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 98(3), pages 707-725.
    16. Omane-Adjepong, Maurice & Alagidede, Paul & Akosah, Nana Kwame, 2019. "Wavelet time-scale persistence analysis of cryptocurrency market returns and volatility," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 514(C), pages 105-120.
    17. Venkata Jandhyala & Stergios Fotopoulos & Ian MacNeill & Pengyu Liu, 2013. "Inference for single and multiple change-points in time series," Journal of Time Series Analysis, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(4), pages 423-446, July.
    18. Ghoshray, Atanu, 2019. "Do international primary commodity prices exhibit asymmetric adjustment?," Journal of Commodity Markets, Elsevier, vol. 14(C), pages 40-50.
    19. Durmus Özdemir & Harald Schmidbauer, 2014. "Interest Rate Risk In Turkish Financial Markets Across Different Time Periods," Bulletin of Monetary Economics and Banking, Bank Indonesia, vol. 16(3), pages 183-204, January.
    20. Joscha Beckmann & Ansgar Belke & Michael Kühl, 2011. "The dollar-euro exchange rate and macroeconomic fundamentals: a time-varying coefficient approach," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 147(1), pages 11-40, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • C00 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - General - - - General
    • N0 - Economic History - - General
    • P52 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Comparative Economic Systems - - - Comparative Studies of Particular Economies

    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:pra:mprapa:27866. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 bibliographic 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.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.