Cormac O Grada
University College Dublin, Economics, Emeritus
Very little is known about wealth-holding and its distribution in Ireland in the past. Here we employ death duty register data to analyse and identify a sample of the top wealth-holders in Ireland between the early 1820s and late 1830s.... more
Very little is known about wealth-holding and its distribution in Ireland in the past. Here we employ death duty register data to analyse and identify a sample of the top wealth-holders in Ireland between the early 1820s and late 1830s. We examine the sources of their wealth and its regional spread, and compare them with their British counterparts. We also discuss the share of Catholics and Quakers among top wealth-holders.
Research Interests: Geography, Wealth Distribution, Ireland, Famine, Inequality, and 4 moreWealth, Distribution of wealth, D, and N
Very little is known about wealth-holding and its distribution in Ireland in the past. Here we employ death duty register data to analyse and identify a sample of the top wealth-holders in Ireland between the early 1820s and late 1830s.... more
Very little is known about wealth-holding and its distribution in Ireland in the past. Here we employ death duty register data to analyse and identify a sample of the top wealth-holders in Ireland between the early 1820s and late 1830s. We examine the sources of their wealth and its regional spread, and compare them with their British counterparts. We also discuss the share of Catholics and Quakers among top wealth-holders.
Research Interests: Geography, Wealth Distribution, Ireland, Famine, Duty, and 6 moreInequality, Wealth, Historical Studies, Distribution of wealth, D, and N
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According to traditional accounts, France underwent a serious crisis in 1846. Although it has never really been proven, it is held that the crisis was due to an enormous deficit in agricultural production. The study of price fluctuations,... more
According to traditional accounts, France underwent a serious crisis in 1846. Although it has never really been proven, it is held that the crisis was due to an enormous deficit in agricultural production. The study of price fluctuations, where price increases are taken to be proportional to production deficits, has led to the characterization of this crisis as a subsistence
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This chapter is an analytic account of Italian emigration and immigration between 1861 and the present. After describing the economic and demographic characteristics of emigrants, it analyzes the causes and effects of their migrations. It... more
This chapter is an analytic account of Italian emigration and immigration between 1861 and the present. After describing the economic and demographic characteristics of emigrants, it analyzes the causes and effects of their migrations. It explores the consequences of the two main waves of Italian emigration (before 1914 and after 1945) for those left behind, and reckons that in the long run, emigration accounted for 4-5% of the growth in GDP per capita, with the South benefiting considerably more than the North. The chapter also describes the impact of recent immigration on those in residence in Italy, with a particular focus on the links with the economic activity, the labor market, the balance of payments, crime and public opinion, on the other.
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Historians generally portray the Irish immigrants who came to the United States, fleeing the Great Famine of the mid-nineteenth century, as hopelessly mired in poverty and hardship due to discrimination, a lack of occupational training,... more
Historians generally portray the Irish immigrants who came to the United States, fleeing the Great Famine of the mid-nineteenth century, as hopelessly mired in poverty and hardship due to discrimination, a lack of occupational training, and oversaturated job markets in the East Coast cities where most of them settled. Although the digitization of census data and other records now enables the tracking of nineteenth-century Americans far more accurately than in the past, scholars have not utilized such data to determine whether the Famine Irish were, in fact, trapped on the bottom rungs of the American socioeconomic ladder. The use of a longitudinal database of Famine immigrants who initially settled in New York and Brooklyn indicates that the Famine Irish had far more occupational mobility than previously recognized. Only 25 percent of men ended their working careers in low-wage, unskilled labor; 44 percent ended up in white-collar occupations of one kind or another—primarily running...
Research Interests: Poverty, Immigration, Migration, Applied Economics, Ireland, and 10 moreInterdisciplinary History, Irish, Famine, Census, Socioeconomic Status, New York, Historical Studies, N, G, and J(Interdisciplinary History, Irish, Famine, Census, Socioeconomic Status, New York, Historical Studies, N, G, and J)
(Interdisciplinary History, Irish, Famine, Census, Socioeconomic Status, New York, Historical Studies, N, G, and J)
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For decades, historians portrayed the immigrants who arrived in the United States in the mid-nineteenth century fleeing the great Irish Famine as a permanent proletariat, doomed to live out their lives in America in poverty due to... more
For decades, historians portrayed the immigrants who arrived in the United States in the mid-nineteenth century fleeing the great Irish Famine as a permanent proletariat, doomed to live out their lives in America in poverty due to illiteracy, nativism, and a lack of vocational skills. Recent research, however, primarily by economic historians, has demonstrated that large numbers of Famine refugees actually fared rather well in the United States, saving surprising sums in bank accounts and making strides up the American socioeconomic ladder. These scholars, however, have never attempted to explain why some Famine immigrants thrived in the U.S. while others struggled merely to scrape by. Utilizing the unusually detailed records of New York’s Emigrant Savings Bank in conjunction with the methods of the digital humanities, this article seeks to understand what characteristics separated those Irish Famine immigrants who fared well financially from those who did not. Analysis of a databas...
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Using records of individual depositors' accounts, this article provides a detailed microeconomic analysis of two banking panics. The panics of 1854 and 1857 were not characterized by an immediate mass panic of depositors and had... more
Using records of individual depositors' accounts, this article provides a detailed microeconomic analysis of two banking panics. The panics of 1854 and 1857 were not characterized by an immediate mass panic of depositors and had important time dimensions. We examine depositor behavior using a hazard model. Contagion was the key factor in 1854 but it created only a local panic. The 1857 panic began with runs by businessmen and banking sophisticates followed by less informed depositors. Evidence suggests that this panic was driven by informational shocks in the face of asymmetric information about the true condition of bank portfolios.
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The lecture paper focuses on some topics that remain current in famine studies. First, it reviews the link between food prices and the severity of famines as reflected in excess mortality. Second, it places the death tolls from several... more
The lecture paper focuses on some topics that remain current in famine studies. First, it reviews the link between food prices and the severity of famines as reflected in excess mortality. Second, it places the death tolls from several recent famines in sub-Saharan Africa in historical context. Third, it reviews the impact of famines on fertility. Famines are always associated with a reduction in births; but to what extent are those births lost or births postponed? Fourth, it reviews the literature that invokes famines as a testing ground for the foetal origins hypothesis. Finally, it reviews the prospect of a near future in which famines have been consigned to history.
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The supposed ramifications of the Little Ice Age, a period of cooling temperatures straddling several centuries in northwestern Europe, reach far beyond meteorology into economic, political, and cultural history. The available annual... more
The supposed ramifications of the Little Ice Age, a period of cooling temperatures straddling several centuries in northwestern Europe, reach far beyond meteorology into economic, political, and cultural history. The available annual temperature series from the late Middle Ages to the end of the nineteenth century, however, contain no major breaks, cycles, or trends that could be associated with the existence of a Little Ice Age. Furthermore, the series of resonant images, ranging from frost fairs to contracting glaciers and from dwindling vineyards to disappearing Viking colonies, often adduced as effects of a Little Ice Age, can also be explained without resort to climate change.
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The commentaries of White and of Büntgen and Hellmann in this journal fail to prove that Europe experienced the kind of sustained falls in temperature between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries that can justify the notion of a Little... more
The commentaries of White and of Büntgen and Hellmann in this journal fail to prove that Europe experienced the kind of sustained falls in temperature between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries that can justify the notion of a Little Ice Age. Neither of them adequately addresses the cogency of the anecdotal or statistical evidence as presented in Kelly and Ó Gráda's article, “The Waning of the Little Ice Age: Climate Change in Early Modern Europe,” especially with regard to the spurious peaks and troughs created by the smoothing of temperature series—the so-called Slutsky Effect.
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Title þÿ Y o u t a k e t h e h i g h r o a d a n d I l l t a k e t h e l o w r o a d : e c o n o m i c s u c c e s s a n d w e l l b e i n g i n t h e longer run Authors(s) Ó Gráda, Cormac Publication date 2005-06 Series UCD Centre for... more
Title þÿ Y o u t a k e t h e h i g h r o a d a n d I l l t a k e t h e l o w r o a d : e c o n o m i c s u c c e s s a n d w e l l b e i n g i n t h e longer run Authors(s) Ó Gráda, Cormac Publication date 2005-06 Series UCD Centre for Economic Research Working Paper Series; WP05/10 Publisher University College Dublin; School of Economics Link to online version http://www.ucd.ie/economics/research/papers/2005/WP05.10.pdf Item record/more information http://hdl.handle.net/10197/472
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This paper surveys publications in the fields of economic history and demography in The Economic and Social Review since 1969. Numbering 60 in all, they cover a broad chronological and thematic range. Some of these papers never attracted... more
This paper surveys publications in the fields of economic history and demography in The Economic and Social Review since 1969. Numbering 60 in all, they cover a broad chronological and thematic range. Some of these papers never attracted much notice, but stand as useful sources for future historians. A few have become classics.
Research Interests: Religion, History, Economic History, Sociology, Demography, and 9 moreEconomics, Historical Demography, Ireland, Notice, Economic Social, N, J, Z, and Numbering
The global COVID-19 pandemic recalls the Ebola epidemic of 2014-15 and earlier much more lethal plague epidemics. All share several characteristics, even though the second and third plague epidemics dwarfed the both the 2014-15 Ebola... more
The global COVID-19 pandemic recalls the Ebola epidemic of 2014-15 and earlier much more lethal plague epidemics. All share several characteristics, even though the second and third plague epidemics dwarfed the both the 2014-15 Ebola outbreak and COVID-19 in terms of mortality. This essay reviews the mortality due to Ebola and plague and their lethality; the spatial and socioeconomic dimensions of plague mortality; the role of public action in containing the two diseases; and their economic impact.
Research Interests: Economic History, Geography, Virology, Health, Mortality, and 9 morePlague, Lethality, Outbreak, Pandemic, I, N, Coronavirus, CoVid, and Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)(Plague, Lethality, Outbreak, Pandemic, I, N, Coronavirus, CoVid, and Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19))
(Plague, Lethality, Outbreak, Pandemic, I, N, Coronavirus, CoVid, and Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19))
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Research Interests: History, Ireland, Famine, Population, Social Science Research Network, and 4 moreHistorical Studies, Malthus, N, and B
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... 52 Joel Mokyr and Cormac O Grdda TABLE 3.5 (Continued) Sample Number Height (inches) Standard Deviation Shortfall (%) Region (continued) 16 16 Rural ... 595 65.60 65.63 65.26 65.25 2.49 2.46 2.53 2.56 10 9 16 15 Occupations Irish... more
... 52 Joel Mokyr and Cormac O Grdda TABLE 3.5 (Continued) Sample Number Height (inches) Standard Deviation Shortfall (%) Region (continued) 16 16 Rural ... 595 65.60 65.63 65.26 65.25 2.49 2.46 2.53 2.56 10 9 16 15 Occupations Irish laborers English & Welsh laborers Irish ...
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Research Interests: Economic History, Economics, History of Economic Thought, Time Series, Economic Theory, and 11 moreMortality, France, Famine Studies, Famine, Europe, Food Prices, Prix, Famines, Cross Section, Démographie, and Food Price(Mortality, France, Famine Studies, Famine, Europe, Food Prices, Prix, Famines, Cross Section, Démographie, and Food Price)
(Mortality, France, Famine Studies, Famine, Europe, Food Prices, Prix, Famines, Cross Section, Démographie, and Food Price)
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For contemporaries, Britain’s success in developing the technologies of the early Industrial Revolution rested in large part on its abundant supply of artisan skills, notably in metalworking. In this paper we outline a simple process... more
For contemporaries, Britain’s success in developing the technologies of the early Industrial Revolution rested in large part on its abundant supply of artisan skills, notably in metalworking. In this paper we outline a simple process where successful industrialization occurs in regions that start with low wages and high mechanical skills, and show that these two factors strongly explain the growth of the tex- tile industry across the 41 counties of England between the 1760s and 1830s. By contrast, literacy and access to capital have no power in predicting industrialization, nor does proximity to coal. Although unimportant as a source of power for early textile machinery, Britain’s coal was vital as a source of cheap heat that allowed it over centuries to develop a unique range of sophisticated metalworking industries. From these activities came artisans, from watchmakers to iron founders, whose industrial skills were in demand not just in Britain but across all of Eu- rope. Against the view that living standards were stagnant during the Industrial Revolution, we find that real wages rose sharply in the industrializing north and collapsed in the previously prosperous south.
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ABSTRACT: The late Dr Brian Trainor was always interested in the history of Irish emigration, and particularly in those who left Ulster for America before the Great Famine. This lecture in his memory reviews recent and ongoing work on... more
ABSTRACT: The late Dr Brian Trainor was always interested in the history of Irish emigration, and particularly in those who left Ulster for America before the Great Famine. This lecture in his memory reviews recent and ongoing work on emigration from the island as a whole, highlighting the role of new material and new techniques, and the new perspectives they offer.
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ABSTRACT: This paper offers (yet another) reflection on the history and current status of economic history. No other sub-discipline of economics or history has tried so hard to be loved as economic history. That love is unrequited,... more
ABSTRACT: This paper offers (yet another) reflection on the history and current status of economic history. No other sub-discipline of economics or history has tried so hard to be loved as economic history. That love is unrequited, because economic history’s problem is existential: it is an inherently interdisciplinary field. Economists and historians are interested in only small parts of what economic history should embrace. Some examples are given of how narrow views of the past the impoverish research. Not all is gloom and doom, however. The controversies economic history provokes and the insights it provides touch on issues that resonate and that will continue to do so.
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Are return migrants 'losers' who fail to adapt to the challenges of the host economy, and thereby exacerbate the brain drain linked to emigration? Or are they 'winners' whose return enhances the human and physical capital of the home... more
Are return migrants 'losers' who fail to adapt to the challenges of the host economy, and thereby exacerbate the brain drain linked to emigration? Or are they 'winners' whose return enhances the human and physical capital of the home country? These questions are the subject of a burgeoning literature. This paper analyze a new database culled from the 1911 Irish population census to address these issues for returnees to Ireland from North America more than a century ago. The evidence suggests that those who returned had the edge over the population as a whole in terms of human capital, if not also over those who remained abroad.
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The role of skills and human capital during England’s Industrial Revolution is the subject of an old but still ongoing debate. This paper contributes to the debate by assessing the artisanal skills of watchmakers and watch tool makers in... more
The role of skills and human capital during England’s Industrial Revolution is the subject of an old but still ongoing debate. This paper contributes to the debate by assessing the artisanal skills of watchmakers and watch tool makers in southwest Lancashire in the eighteenth century and their links to apprenticeship. The flexibility of the training regime and its evolution are discussed, as is the decline of the industry.
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This paper surveys publications in the fields of economic history and demography in the ESR since 1969. Numbering sixty in all, they cover a broad chronological and thematic range. Some of these papers never attracted much notice, but... more
This paper surveys publications in the fields of economic history and demography in the ESR since 1969. Numbering sixty in all, they cover a broad chronological and thematic range. Some of these papers never attracted much notice, but stand as useful sources for future historians. A few have become classics.
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ABSTRACT: Emigrants from Italy and Ireland contributed disproportionately to the Age of Mass Migration. That their departure improved the living standards of those they left behind is hardly in doubt. Nevertheless, a voluminous... more
ABSTRACT: Emigrants from Italy and Ireland contributed disproportionately to the Age of Mass Migration. That their departure improved the living standards of those they left behind is hardly in doubt. Nevertheless, a voluminous literature on the selectivity of migrant flows—both from sending and receiving country perspectives—has given rise to claims that migration generates both ‘brain drains’ and ‘brain gains’. On the one hand, positive or negative selection among emigrants may affect the level of human capital in sending countries. On the other hand, the prospect of emigration and return migration may both spur investment in schooling in source countries. This essay describes the history of emigration from Italy and Ireland during the Age of Mass Migration from these perspectives.
ABSTRACT: Emigrants from Italy and Ireland contributed disproportionately to the Age of Mass Migration. That their departure improved the living standards of those they left behind is hardly in doubt. Nevertheless, a voluminous... more
ABSTRACT: Emigrants from Italy and Ireland contributed
disproportionately to the Age of Mass Migration. That their departure improved the living standards of those they left behind is hardly in doubt. Nevertheless, a voluminous literature on the selectivity of migrant flows— both from sending and receiving country perspectives—has given rise to claims that migration generates both ‘brain drains’ and ‘brain gains’. On the one hand, positive or negative selection among emigrants may affect the level of human capital in sending countries. On the other hand, the prospect of emigration and return migration may both spur investment in schooling in source countries. This essay describes the history of emigration from Italy and Ireland during the Age of Mass Migration from these perspectives.
disproportionately to the Age of Mass Migration. That their departure improved the living standards of those they left behind is hardly in doubt. Nevertheless, a voluminous literature on the selectivity of migrant flows— both from sending and receiving country perspectives—has given rise to claims that migration generates both ‘brain drains’ and ‘brain gains’. On the one hand, positive or negative selection among emigrants may affect the level of human capital in sending countries. On the other hand, the prospect of emigration and return migration may both spur investment in schooling in source countries. This essay describes the history of emigration from Italy and Ireland during the Age of Mass Migration from these perspectives.
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The link between demographic pressure and economic conditions in pre-Famine Ireland has long interested economists. This paper re-visits the topic, harnessing the highly dis-aggregated parish-level data from the 1841 Census of Ireland.... more
The link between demographic pressure and economic conditions in pre-Famine Ireland has long interested economists. This paper re-visits the topic, harnessing the highly dis-aggregated parish-level data from the 1841 Census of Ireland. Using population per value adjusted acre as a measure of population pressure, our results indicate that on the eve of the Great Famine of 1846–50, population pressure was positively associated with both illiteracy rates and the prevalence of poor quality housing. But while our analysis shows that population pressure was one of the primary factors underpinning pre-Famine poverty, it also highlights the importance of geography and human agency. A counterfactual computation indicates that had Ireland's population stayed at its 1800 level, this would have led to only modest improvements in literacy and housing.
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Although urban growth historically depended on large inflows of migrants, little is known of the process of migration in the era before railways. Here we use detailed data for Paris on women arrested for prostitution in the 1760s, or... more
Although urban growth historically depended on large inflows of migrants, little is known of the process of migration in the era before railways. Here we use detailed data for Paris on women arrested for prostitution in the 1760s, or registered as prostitutes in the 1830s and 1850s; and of men holding identity cards in the 1790s, to examine patterns of female and male migration. We supplement these with data on all women and men buried in 1833. Migration was highest from areas of high living standards, measured by literacy rates. Distance was a strong deterrent to female migration (reflecting limited employment opportunities) that falls with railways, whereas its considerably lower impact on men barely changes through the nineteenth century.
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The paper discusses mainly demographic aspects of the Great Irish Famine in Ulster.
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We describe a new dataset created from the first 18,000 savings accounts opened (from 1850 to 1858) at the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank in New York City. The bank was founded by Irish Americans and most of its depositors in its first... more
We describe a new dataset created from the first 18,000 savings accounts opened (from 1850 to 1858) at the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank in New York City. The bank was founded by Irish Americans and most of its depositors in its first decade of operations were recent Irish immigrants. The data offer a unique window on both savings behavior by the poor and not-so-poor in antebellum New York and on how emigrants who came primarily from rural parts of Ireland adapted to urban life. They also contain much that is new on the regional origins of mid-nineteenth century Irish immigrants and on their settlement patterns in New York.
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The paper employs recent data from the European Social Survey and Eurobarometer to place evolving Irish attitudes to immigration in comparative context. Particular attention is given to determinants of differences in attitudes by gender,... more
The paper employs recent data from the European Social Survey and Eurobarometer to place evolving Irish attitudes to immigration in comparative context. Particular attention is given to determinants of differences in attitudes by gender, xenophobia, and exaggerated impressions of the immigrant presence.
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ABSTRACT The ramifications of the Little Ice Age, a period of cooling temperatures straddling several centuries in northwestern Europe, reach far beyond meteorology into economic, political, and cultural history. The LIA has spawned a... more
ABSTRACT
The ramifications of the Little Ice Age, a period of
cooling temperatures straddling several centuries in
northwestern Europe, reach far beyond meteorology into
economic, political, and cultural history. The LIA has
spawned a series of resonant images that range from frost
fairs to contracting glaciers, and from disappearing
vineyards to disappearing Viking colonies. This paper takes
issue with these images, and argues that the phenomena
they describe can be explained without resort to climate
change.
The ramifications of the Little Ice Age, a period of
cooling temperatures straddling several centuries in
northwestern Europe, reach far beyond meteorology into
economic, political, and cultural history. The LIA has
spawned a series of resonant images that range from frost
fairs to contracting glaciers, and from disappearing
vineyards to disappearing Viking colonies. This paper takes
issue with these images, and argues that the phenomena
they describe can be explained without resort to climate
change.
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Text of a lecture marking the centenary of the 1916 Rising. the focus is on the economic context and background.