Ulf Christian Ewert

The biological standard of living on the decline: Episodes from Germany during early industrialisation

Having been separated into numerous autonomous states, nineteenth-century Germany was the very model of a regionally diversified process of industrialisation. How the nutritional status of Germans developed during early industrialisation is analysed in this article. With newly available data, average height for birth cohorts 1770–1849 is established for the two German states of Saxony and Wuerttemberg. The development of these heights is compared to the – so far – sole German height trend of this epoch, the average height of Bavarians. The results suggest that, starting with the birth cohorts of the Napoleonic era, the biological standard of living was on the decline across all the three German territories under consideration. An explorative interpretation of the height trend in Saxony reveals that during the beginning of industrialisation a mixture of relatively bad climatic conditions, rising prices of foodstuffs and a persistently falling real income can be held responsible for the rapid and substantial decline of the nutritional status in this pioneering state of German industrialisation. Finally, by the middle of the nineteenth century the Saxons found themselves trapped in a classical type of nutritional crisis.

Can Regional Variations in Demographic Structure Explain Regional Differences in Car Use? A Case Study in Austria

Due to its manifold impact on the environment private car use represents an important dimension of environmental behavior in industrialized countries. Obviously, private car use is related to demographic characteristics of households such as the life-cycle stage and the living arrangement the household lives in. In addition systematic regional differences of private car use have to be taken into account. In this paper a causal model is derived, which aims to explain regional differences in car ownership and car use by regional demographic differences and region-specific control factors such as the car technology and institutional factors. Using aggregate data from a household survey in Austria and data from Austrian official statistics causal effect coefficients are then estimated. By applying path analysis the estimated effects of regional demographic characteristics on region-specific car ownership and car use can be decomposed into direct and indirect effects, with the latter effects being mediated by the control factors. Except for the average age of household heads and population density no significant direct demographic effects on regional patterns of car ownership and car use can be found. Car ownership and car use are best predicted by using the considered control factors as predictor variables. Nevertheless, many of the presumed indirect effects turn out to be of importance since demographic factors are closely linked to measures of regional institutional settings like per capita income, ownership of house/apartment and net commuting index.

Consequences of Mortality Crises in Pre-Modern European Towns: A Multiagent-Based Simulation Approach

So far, people’s interactions during pre-modern mortality crises and in its aftermath seem widely unexplored. For that purpose a multiagent-based model of a pre-modern town has been implemented in JAMES (A Java-Based Agent Modelling Environment for Simulation). Three actor groups, i.e. merchants, craftsmen, laborers, form the town’s population and are modelled as agents who behave according to the assumption of utility and profit maximization. They are interacting as consumers and suppliers via several markets, e.g., a grain market, a consumer good market, and a labor market. The local authorities are modelled as a planning agent which, based on some underlying objective function, decides upon a course of interventions into market and social structures. Disasters are induced into the model, provoking reactions of actors according to their preferences and intentions. Macro-level effects can be observed, that are not intended by the individual actor s but are characteristic for premodern mortality crises. Thus, this simulation model allows to experiment with actors’ intentions and preference s, to mimic disasters leading to mortality crises, and to trace the courses of economic and demographic developments in the aftermath of such crises.

Institutions of Hanseatic Trade

In st it u ti on s of H a n se at ic T ra d e The merchants of the medieval Hanse monopolised trade in the Baltic and North Sea areas. The authors describe the structure of this trade system in terms of network organisation and explain, on the grounds of institutional economics, the coordination of the merchants’ commercial exchange by reputation, trust and culture. The institutional economics approach also allows for a comprehensive analysis of coordination problems arising between merchants, towns and the ‘Kontore’. Due to the simplicity and flexibility of network trade the Hansards could bridge the huge gap in economic development between the West and the East. In the changing economic conditions around 1500, however, exactly these characteristics proved to be a serious limit to further retain their trade monopoly. The Authors Ulf Christian Ewert is Research Associate at the Cluster of Excellence ‘Religion and Politics’ and lecturer in economic history at the University of Münster. He has taught medieval and economic history at Chemnitz University of Technology, Helmut-Schmidt-University Hamburg, Free University of Berlin and the universities of Munich, Halle and Regensburg. He published numerous articles on the Hanse, the Portuguese overseas expansion, the political economy of pre-modern princely courts and on early-modern living standards.