Prices, Wages, and Welfare in Early Colonial South Australia, 1836-1850

Sumner La Croix and Edwyna Harris ()
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Edwyna Harris: Monash University

No 201910, Working Papers from University of Hawaii at Manoa, Department of Economics

Abstract: From first settlement of South Australia (SA) in November 1836, the colony underwent a series of crises due to delays in surveying and distributing lands, producing crops, and employing new migrants. Histories of this period emphasize that a combination of high food prices and high wages burdened the government and new farms. To check and refine standard explanations for early colonization crises, we employ a number of sources, including SA newspapers and colonial government blue books, to develop monthly series for prices, wages, and the cost of “respectable†and “bare bones†consumption baskets over the 1838-1850 period. We use Corden’s model of a booming economy with traded and non-traded goods to understand how various shocks, including the 1840 stop in immigration and the 1844/1845 copper discoveries, could have affected the SA economy. We find that the model’s implications are consistent with changes in our newly developed SA data series.

Keywords: Adelaide; colonization; welfare ratio; standard of living; South Australia; relief; Wakefield; migrants (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D44 N47 N57 N97 R30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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http://www.economics.hawaii.edu/research/workingpapers/WP_19-10.pdf First version, 2019 (application/pdf)

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Working Paper: Prices, Wages, and Welfare in Early Colonial South Australia, 1836-1850 (2019)
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