Jean-Michel Chevet

Famine and Market in Ancien Régime France

How—and how well—do food markets function in famine conditions? The controversy surrounding this question may benefit from historical perspective. Here we study two massive famines that struck France between 1693 and 1710, killing over two million people. In both cases the impact of harvest failure was exacerbated by wartime demands on the food supply; we ask whether the crises were exacerbated yet further by a failure of markets to function as they did in normal times. The evidence, we conclude, is most consistent with the view that markets in fact helped alleviate these crises, albeit modestly.

Grain prices and mortality: A note on 'La Michodiere's Law'

Abstract In a postscript to his Recherches sur la population (1766), political arithmetician Louis Messance made the case for a positive association mortality and the price of wheat. The true author of the postscript was probably Jean-Baptiste François de la Michodière (1720 – 97), Messances mentor and employer. The calculations given in this paper offer tempered support for what is dubbed ‘La Michodières law’. There was indeed a correlation between prices and mortality in early eighteenth-century France; but La Michodières own and other data imply that even then it was weaker and less mechanical than implied by some of his successors.

Explaining the Food Purchases of the Convent-School at Saint-Cyr 1703-1788

The analysis of 85 years of food purchases at the rich, market-oriented Saint-Cyr convent School in the 18th century probes the determinants of consumption, its short-term variations and long-term shifts. Using time-series econometrics, we show that there is no equilibrium relationship between series of consumed quantities, prices and income that would be specific to the long term. Regarding short-term variations in consumption, the estimation of a demand system and the derivation of the corresponding elasticities allow us to show that market prices and budgetary constraints do play an important role, but also that this role remains limited, essentially because economic variables do not make it possible to account for the long-term evolutions. These unexplained long-run shifts suggest an interpretation in terms of structural changes in preferences, confirmed nonparametrically using revealed preference tests, which can be related - but not always - to the main subsistence crises that occurred throughout the century.

REVISITING “SUBSISTENCE CRISES”: THE CHARACTERISTICS OF DEMOGRAPHIC CRISES IN FRANCE IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE 19TH CENTURY 1

ABSTRACT 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 crisis. Certain historians have even noted strong demographic repercussions, in particular an increase in mortality. This article proposes to reassess the importance of this crisis. It also re-examines the different economic and demographic variables and the relationships between them at a national and regional level. In fact, as far as the demographics are concerned, this crisis turned out to be of a low magnitude, particularly when compared to the crises resulting from cholera in the 1830s. This first observation leads to an assessment of the real importance of production deficits. Contrary to the famines of the end of the 17th century, this crisis, although labelled a subsistence crisis, is characterized by a rather low deficit in cereal production. Substitutes such as potatoes, buckwheat, maize, and imports limited the effect of the crisis. As far as price increases are concerned, they appear to be non-proportional to production deficits: the two variables are not correlated.

Animal Protein and Rational Choice: Diet in the Eighteenth Century

Analysis of the account books of the convent school of Saint-Cyr between 1688 and 1788 reveals the causes of the institutions changing patterns of meat consumption. Although a rational-choice model can explain short-term variations in the schools diet, economic variables alone are not sufficient to explain its long-term variations, as evolving tastes began to infiltrate Saint-Cyrs traditional, aristocratic diet. The unintended side effect of this development was to improve nutrition, which the school managed to do without running afoul of claims to elite status.