EH.Net Abstracts in Economic History

           EHS Abstract Submission
                    (c) 1997 EH.Net
-----------------------------------------------------------
              Name:  Gregory Clark
               Email:  gclark at ucdavis.edu
         Institution:  University of California, Davis  

         Co-author:  None
 
             Title:  The Reports of the Charity Commission as a
Source in Economic History  

  Internet Address
of abstracted work:  Not available on the Internet  

           By mail:  
                     Gregory Clark
                     Department of Economics
                     University of California
                     Davis, CA 95616
 
          Language:  English
 
          Abstract:
   The Charity Commission (the Brougham Commission) of 1818-1837
published 26,987 pages of material on the charities of England
and Wales.  A second set of inquiries was launched to update
these reports in the years 1889-1912.  About 12,000 further pages
were published in this second inquiry.	These inquiries give a
mass of evidence on the return on various types of capital assets
from 1500 to 1912, on land and house values in this period, and
on the enclosure status of land.  Yet the material has been
rarely used as a source for economic history.  This paper
explores the potential value of this data to economic historians.
It discusses how this data was compiled into data sets and offers
various tests of the representativeness of the data for private
market economic conditions.
 
      Bibliography:  Clark, Gregory. "The Reports of the Charity
Commission as a Source in Economic History," Working Paper no.
80,  Agricultural History Center, University of California,
Davis, November 1995 (revised February 1997). 

                  Subject:  D
 Geographical Area:  4
      Country/Region:  England
           Time Period:  0