A Facebook friend* linked to this 1945 paper I'd never read before: The Economic Organisation of a POW Camp, by R. A. Radford. I saved it to read to Mark during our 5-hour drive from Cincinnati to Nashville, because I knew he'd really be interested in it.
We reached a transit camp in Italy about a fortnight after capture and received 1/4 of a Red Cross food parcel each a week later. At once exchanges, already established, multiplied in volume. Starting with simple direct barter, such as a non-smoker giving a smoker friend his cigarette issue in exchange for a chocolate ration, more complex exchanges soon became an accepted custom. Stories circulated of a padre who started off round the camp with a tin of cheese and five cigarettes and returned to his bed with a complete parcel in addition to his original cheese and cigarettes; the market was not yet perfect. Within a week or two, as the volume of trade grew, rough scales of exchange values came into existence. Sikhs, who had at first exchanged tinned beef for practically any other foodstuff, began to insist on jam and margarine. It was realized that a tin of jam was worth 1/2 lb. of margarine plus something else; that a cigarette issue was worth several chocolates issues, and a tin of diced carrots was worth practically nothing.
Radford goes on to describe the development of a trading and barter economy complete with currency, price fixing, a futures market, middlemen, entrepreneurs, a service industry, and a robust internal debate about economic policy. It's really worth a read even if you think you're not very interested in economics.
I guess it's a "classic" paper, and I'm not surprised. The writing is crisp and detailed, well-organized and a good balance between the personal experience and the interested (though probably not objective) observer; it was easy to imagine Radford the economist-turned-prisoner-of-war, or maybe he was a POW-turned-amateur economist, watching the little economy rise and fall (and sharing in its fortunes) and thinking, "I'm going to get a paper published about this when I get out of here."
Radford's paper struck me as an excellent example of engaging science writing, even if the observations are anecdotes and the science a social rather than a hard science. I think there is a place for narrative-style, rather than data-driven, reports about observed phenomena. As long as you are careful not to draw stronger conclusions from the described experience than its narrow scope permits, and as long as you remain open to considering narratives from other observers that may offer counter-evidence to your own conclusions, this kind of anecdotal and personal report has great value. If nothing else such reports suggest avenues for further exploration, and they stimulate interest in the subject for lay and technical readers alike.
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*I am new to Facebook**, and I'm not sure yet of the etiquette of hat-tipping people for Facebook links when they blog under a pseudonym. Somebody fill me in when they get a chance.
** Unless we're close in real life or have corresponded for quite some time, if you try to friend me I probably won't confirm it, at least not yet. I'm still not sure how I want to use FB. Don't take it personally.
Anecdote is not data, as they like to say, but I loved how this underlined that things such as futures markets, currency exchanges, inflation, etc. are thing that just happen, naturally. Even if you try to come up with rules that will prevent it from happening, it just moves to the black market.
The predictability of which is something which suggests that economics may be something of a science. Something I wouldn't have pictured myself admitting five years ago.
Posted by: Darwin | 12 September 2009 at 08:52 PM
And how I loved that their black market had a black market.
Posted by: bearing | 12 September 2009 at 11:27 PM