Where do I find historic economic data?

May 14, 2009 2:37 PM

Is there some database of historical market prices for commodities? As in, if I wanted to know the average market price for a tonne of salt petre in 1835 where would I look?
posted by selenized to society & culture (7 comments total)

I would imagine such archives would be contained at the New York Public Library of Science, Industry, and Business. Just curious, but why do you ask?
posted by Jon_Evil at 2:59 PM on May 14

If you can wait a week or so, this is exactly the sort of question Wolfram Alpha is supposed to be prepared to answer.
posted by Missiles K. Monster at 3:06 PM on May 14

I've been reading about the history of industrial chemistry, and I'm just curious to see the correlations between market prices and new inventions and factories.

So far I've tried poking around google and at the local university library, but all I've found is market data for the past 20 years.
posted by selenized at 3:18 PM on May 14

Ask your local university reference librarian! That's what they're for!
posted by Jon_Evil at 3:22 PM on May 14

You don't specify which country, but for Britain, see B.R. Mitchell, British Historical Statistics (1988) is a good starting point. Mitchell has also published collections of international statistics, although you can't get at those on Google Books. For specifics you might also try searching Google Scholar for articles in economic history journals..
posted by greycap at 3:25 PM on May 14

I talked to the lady at the reference guest and she pointed me to books like what greycap suggested. However they only seem to list agricultural and mining products, whereas I'm looking for basic chemicals.
posted by selenized at 5:18 PM on May 14

Given a specific enough commodity and time period, you might be able to find denominated price information, but it probably wouldn't tell you much. That said, historic food prices seems like a good starting point.

How can we find prices of popular items through the centuries to make comparison charts?
A "Food Thru the Ages " project sounds wonderful! Unfortunately, this is not a simple task. Determining accurate historic values of consumer goods is a complicated economic process--one which must factor in regional differences, inflation, labor costs and personal income. To make international comparisons one must also study the evolution of monetary systems and foreign exchange rates. This is why (for example) it is impossible to draw a simple chart of bread prices through the ages across all cultures. If you want to compare your local prices from one decade to another you will need to factor in the Consumer Price Index for your area. Numbers are supplied by the U.S. Department of Labor.
posted by dhartung at 11:34 PM on May 14