Prices of Wheat and Commodity Price Indexes for England, 1259-1930

Abstract

IT is now many years since the publication of Wiebe's index of commodity prices in England for the period I50I-I702. Nineteenth-century studies of prices have latterly been carried back as far as I779, but there remains a substantial gap between the index based on Rogers' materials and the modern indexes. Recent developments of statistical method have disclosed deficiencies in the computations of Wiebe, so that we are now in position to make a number of important corrections in his figures, by interpolation of missing items. The theory of interpolation, too, suggests the possibility of connecting the earlier with the later series of index numbers by using the movements of wheat prices as the basis of interpolation. It has seemed best not to carry out the process of interpolation explicitly, but the effect is secured by the reduction of the various series to a common base and by the use of the series of wheat prices to supply the general character of movement in the period 1703-78. It thus becomes possible to establish the broader facts in regard to prices over a long historical period, and though results are necessarily tentative, they are certainly significant.