A history of prices in Canada, 1840–1871: a new wholesale price index
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract We present a new monthly wholesale price index for Canada, 1840–71, comparing fluctuations in the Canadian macroeconomy with fluctuations in similar U.S. and British indexes. Canadian prices move through distinct phases: the 1840s rise in prices and the decline in the depression of 1848–49; the mid‐century economic boom and the 1857 depression; U.S. Civil War inflation and apparent Canadian price insulation through a flexible exchange rate created by U.S. withdrawal from gold; and the non‐inflationary boom following Confederation. After adjustment for the U.S. greenback issue, a broad coherence of Canadian, U.S., and British indexes suggests highly integrated commodity markets. JEL Classification: N20, N21, E31 Une histoire des prix au Canada 1840–1871: un nouvel indice de prix de gros Ce mémoire présente un nouvel indice de prix de gros pour le Canada dans la période de 1840 à 1871. C’est un indice mensuel. A l’aide de cet indicateur, on décrit les fluctuations de la macroéconomie canadienne et on les compare avec les fluctuations d’indices similaires aux Etats‐Unis et en Grande Bretagne. Les prix canadiens passent à travers plusieurs phases au cours de cette période. Les prix s’accroissent dans les années 1840 et chutent avec la dépression de 1848/1849; et puis il y a le grand boom victorien du milieu du siècle qui culmine en 1857; il y a de plus les périodes de l’inflation de la guerre civile américaine et l’immunisation apparente des prix canadiens par la création d’un régime de change flexible parce que les Etats‐Unis se retirent de la monnaie étalonnée sur l’or; et enfin la période sans inflation du boom qui suit la Confédération. Si l’on ajuste pour tenir compte de l’affaire des « greenbacks », il y a cohérence des divers indices canadiens, américains et britanniques. Voilà qui suggère des marchés de biens fortement intégrés.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.006 | 0.017 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.007 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".