Great Famine in Ireland
Potatoes during the Irish Great Famine were long believed to be the only example of a Giffen good. However, this theory was debunked by Gerald P. Dwyer and Cotton M. Lindsey in their 1984 article Robert Giffen and the Irish Potato, where they showed the contradicting nature of the Giffen "legend" with respect to historical evidence.
The Giffen nature of the Irish potato was also later discredited by Sherwin Rosen of the University of Chicago in his 1999 paper Potato Paradoxes. Rosen showed that the phenomenon could be explained by a normal demand model.
Read more about this topic: Giffen Good
Famous quotes containing the words famine and/or ireland:
“They can rule the world while they can persuade us
our pain belongs in some order.
Is death by famine worse than death by suicide,
than a life of famine and suicide ... ?”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“Life springs from death and from the graves of patriot men and women spring living nations.... They think that they have pacified Ireland. They think that they have purchased half of us and intimidated the other half. They think that they have foreseen everything, think they have provided against everything; but the fools, the fools, the fools, they have left us our Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these graves Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.”
—Patrick Henry Pearse (1879–1916)