The ‘light touch’ of the Black Death in the Southern Netherlands: an urban trick?

Although the fanciful notion that the Black Death bypassed the Low Countries has long been rejected, nevertheless a persistent view remains that the Low Countries experienced only a ‘light touch’ of the plague when placed in a broader European perspective, and recovered quickly and fully. However, in this article an array of dispersed sources for the Southern Netherlands together with a new mortmain accounts database for Hainaut show that the Black Death was severe, perhaps no less severe than other parts of western Europe; that serious plagues continued throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; and that the Black Death and recurring plagues spread over vast territories—including the countryside. The previous conception of a ‘light touch’ of plague in the Low Countries was created by the overprivileging of particular urban sources, and a failure to account for the rapid replenishment of cities via inward migration, which obscured demographic decimation. We suggest that the population of the Low Countries may not have recovered faster than other parts of western Europe but instead experienced a greater degree of post‐plague rural–urban migration.     

Operating Strategies for Battery Storage Systems in Low-Voltage Grids to Limit the Feed-In Power of Solar Power Systems Using Fuzzy Control

Germany’s energy turnaround is leading to an increasing integration of photovoltaics (PVs) throughout its distribution grid. To ensure safe grid operation in times of high solar radiation, PV plants must either be throttled back to comply with the feed-in limitation or store a portion of their excess electricity in batteries. This paper presents a grid-optimized operating strategy for PV storage systems based on a Fuzzy Logic Controller that reduces peak feed-in and thus also PV curtailment losses. The Fuzzy Logic Controller uses data on PV power surplus and battery charge level as input variables. To obtain good results, the set of numerical parameters of the membership functions is enhanced by evolutionary programming.The energetic assessment shows that even small electrical storage capacities (<<5?kWh) reduce curtailment losses considerably when using the grid-optimized operating strategy. The economic assessment shows that, in 2016, investments in PV storage systems with large PV plants and small batteries have small (positive) Internal Rates of Return. The system efficiency of the battery storage has a small impact on the profitability of PV storage systems, whereas the cycle stability and the electricity purchase price have a large impact. Moreover, there is an economic benefit for plant operators to switch from the simple to the grid-optimized operating strategy. Solar forecast inaccuracies and variations in load and generation profiles have a negligible impact on the performance of the control algorithm.     

Functional food,uncertainty and consumers’ choices: A lab experiment with enriched yoghurts for lowering cholesterol

A lab experiment was conducted in France to evaluate the impact of health information on consumers’ choices for functional food. Successive messages revealing benefits and uncertainties of consuming yoghurts with added plant sterols for reducing cholesterol were delivered. Results show a significant and positive influence of the message linked to the cholesterol reduction on willingness to pay, even for participants without cholesterol. However participants expressed little interest in information about potential risks and scientific uncertainties, since their impacts on willingness to pay are not always statistically significant. An econometric estimation shows a significant link between the change in willingness to pay and the perception by participants regarding the scientific validity linked to the sterols.     

Dependency traps in self‐targeting food aid programs

We present an economy of farmers where food aid is warranted due to poverty traps triggered by nonconvex production sets. We model a food‐aid intervention as a dynamic game between a food‐aid manager and the farmers in a context of asymmetrical information. The food‐aid manager is motivated by a relief objective and targets farmers suffering the poverty trap. The food‐aid manager uses a self‐targeting mechanism by providing the aid through a food wage in exchange for participation in the intervention's activities. Guided by the relief objective and targeting constraint, he fixes the food wage equal to the reservation wage of the farmers not suffering the poverty trap. Dependency traps will then happen every time there is a considerable technological and nutritional gap between farmers who are in and out of the poverty trap. When there is a gap, poor farmers earn more working for the reservation wage of the well‐off farmers than by working in their own farm. Dependency can be overcome only if the food‐aid program allows farmers to upgrade their productive technologies and catch up with those farmers who are out of the poverty trap.     

Health information and substitution between fish: Lessons from laboratory and field experiments

This paper compares results from a lab experiment and a field experiment conducted in France to evaluate the impact of health information on fish consumption. In both experiments, health information concerns a benefit (omega 3) and a risk (methylmercury). While the lab experiment focuses on two species, namely canned tuna and canned sardines, the field experiment offers a complete measure of the information impact on the choice of various species by consumers. Results from both experiments showed a significant preference change against canned tuna. In the lab experiment, the preference change was reflected by a decrease in WTP, while in the field experiment the preference change was reflected by a decrease in consumption. In the field experiment, among all fish consumed, only the decrease in consumption of canned tuna was statistically significant. A model calibrated to represent the demand for canned tuna allows for a comparison between the two experiments. It shows that the lab experiment suggests a smaller decrease in canned tuna demand compared to the field experiment.     

Growing market concentration and changes in consumer welfare: The case of the U.S. commercial airline market

Initial assessments of the economic deregulation of the U.S. airline industry indicated that most consumers gained from the increased competition in the airline market. More recent studies have reached less favorable conclusions. In this study, changes in passenger welfare are determined for 19 U.S. destination cities for the years 1979, 1983, and 1987 on the basis of Hicks' equivalent variation measure, using a counterfactual research design. Particular attention is given to variations in consumer welfare gains/losses depending on (a) the proportion of the change in air fares attributed to deregulation, and (b) the destination airport's classification. The estimates suggest that travelers to large, long-standing hub cities were generally insulated from any large post-1979 welfare changes. Travelers to new hubs experienced substantial welfare declines between 1979 and 1987 — although their post-1983 welfare changes were uniformly positive. Travel to nonhub airports showed the greatest variance, with both the relatively largest welfare gains and the relatively largest losses.     

Tests for the Role of Risk Aversion on Input Use

For risk-averting agents, risks alter production decisions while the existence of institutions to insure against adverse states of nature will likely restore decisions toward levels under risk neutrality. In this article, conditions are identified on a stochastic technology to test   H^rn _0,≤  : that risk averters choose smaller input levels than risk neutral agents, and   H^ra _0,≤  : that an increase in risk aversion reduces input use. A robust statistical method to test for dominance is adapted to stochastic production relations. It is found that   H^rn _0,≤  is likely true for nitrogen application on Iowa corn. Weaker evidence is found in favor of   H^ra _0,≤  .     

A Cost‐Based Model of Seasonal Production with Application to Milk Policy

Milk production is seasonal in many European countries. While quantity seasonality poses capacity management problems for dairy processors, an EU policy goal is to reduce price seasonality. After developing a model of endogenous seasonality, we study the effects of three EU policies on production decisions. These are private storage subsidies, production removals, and production quotas. When cost functions are seasonal in a specified way, then arbitrage opportunities interact with storage subsidies to reduce both price and consumption seasonality. But production seasonality is likely to increase because storage subsidies promote temporal market integration. Conditions are identified under which product market interventions increase quantity seasonality.