Eline Poelmans

How do chocolate lovers balance taste and ethical considerations

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate how chocolate lovers balance taste and ethical considerations when selecting chocolate products. Design/methodology/approach – The data set was collected through a survey at the 2014 “Salon du Chocolat” in Brussels, Belgium. The authors distributed 700 copies and received 456 complete responses (65 percent response rate). Choice experiments were used to estimate the relative importance of different chocolate characteristics and to predict respondents’ willingness to pay for marginal changes in those characteristics. The authors estimate both a conditional logit model and a latent class model to take possible preference heterogeneity into account. Findings – On average, respondents were willing to pay 11 euros more for 250 g fairtrade labeled chocolate compared to conventional chocolate. However, taste clearly dominates ethical considerations. The authors could distinguish three consumer segments, each with a different tradeoff between taste and fairtra...

How beer created Belgium (and the Netherlands): the contribution of beer taxes to war finance during the Dutch Revolt

ABSTRACT The present-day border between Belgium and the Netherlands can be traced back to the separation of the Low Countries after the Dutch Revolt (1566–1648) against Spanish rule. The capacity to finance the escalating cost of war determined the outcome of this conflict. As Spain struggled to provide regular pay to its troops, its war efforts were often plagued by mutiny. In contrast, the Dutch Republic managed to raise large sums for its war budgets. As we show in this article, excise taxes on beer consumption were one of the largest income sources in Holland, the leading province of the Dutch Republic. Over the course of the Revolt, Dutch beer taxes brought in the equivalent of 29% of Spanish tax revenues on silver from America. Beer taxes thus played a crucial role in financing the Dutch Revolt which led to the separation of the Low Countries and, eventually, the creation of Belgium.

Factors determining authors' willingness to wait for editorial decisions from economic history journals

In this contribution, we measure how long researchers are willing to wait (WTW) for an editorial decision on the acceptance or rejection of a submitted manuscript. This measure serves as a proxy for the expected value of a publication to a researcher in the field of economic, business and financial history. We analyze how this WTW measure varies with the characteristics of the submitting authors themselves. We distinguish the impact of personal characteristics (including age, gender and geographic location) as well as work-related characteristics (including research discipline, affiliation and academic position). To identify the factors determining economic history authors’ WTW for editorial decisions, we use a valuation technique known as stated choice experiments. Our results show that respondents found the standing of the journal to be at least as important as its ISI impact factor. Moreover, we find differences in publication culture between economic and history departments. Overall, researchers’ willingness to wait is influenced to a greater extent by the research discipline in which the respondents are active (history vs. economics), than by their personal characteristics (e.g. the education or the type of Ph.D. they obtained).

Belgium: Craft Beer Nation?

Belgium has to some extent always been a “craft beer nation”. As in other countries, the industrial revolution and scale economies in advertising caused a dramatic consolidation in the beer industry in the twentieth century: The number of breweries declined from more than 3000 in 1900 to around 150 in 1980. However, a wide variety of different types of beer survived to a greater extent in Belgium than elsewhere. The famous beer writer Michael Jackson noted that “The great beers of Belgium offer an extraordinary variety … and represent some of the oldest traditions of brewing in the Western world.” This made the country and its surviving small brewers a source of inspiration for the world’s craft brewers. Since the 1980s, Belgian craft beers have recovered and rapidly gained market share, not just domestically but globally. The dramatic export growth of Belgian craft beers, especially since 2000, is the result of a remarkably symbiotic interaction between large multinational brewing companies and small-scale crafts. With many small-scale craft brewers being taken over by large international brewing companies in recent years, the question what is “craft” and what is “Belgian” in today’s globally sold “Belgian craft beers” is an important question.