Large-scale mortality shocks and the Great Irish Famine 1845-1852

This paper considers the consequences of a large scale mortality shock arising from a famine or epidemic for long run economic and demographic development. The Great Irish Famine of 1845-1852 is taken as a case-study and is incorporated as an exogenous mortality shock into the type of long-run unified growth theory pioneered by Galor and Weil (1999, 2000), and modelled by Lagerlöf (2003a,b) among others. Through calibration, the impact of such a mortality shock occurring on the cusp of a country's transition from a Malthusian to a Modern Growth regime is then depicted.