Scattering as insurance: A robust explanation of open fields?

Land markets and inequality: evidence from medieval England

“…On the historical distribution of harvest failures see Hoskins (1964), Jordan (1996, Schofield (1997), and McCloskey (1975, 1976. Bekar (2001) employs seed yield data and historical observations on harvest failures to calculate estimates for distance from disaster. 40 Only when harvest failures, and therefore distress land sales, are almost completely absent for middleholdersi.e.…”

“…The simulated distribution of landholdings is robust to a range of assarting rules. 28 We use the production parameters from the literature on open fields (McCloskey 1975a, 1975b, 1976, Bekar 2001) to parameterize our simulation, a mean standardized harvest produces 110 units of grain with a standard deviation of 48.4.…”

“…33 A subsistence harvest (z) is 55% of output on a standard virgate (Bekar, 2001;McCloskey 1975a). 34 We define the Probability of Disaster (POD) as the annual probability an agent experiences a subsistence crisis.…”

Review of periodical literature published in 2004

“…Certainly, if we accept that commercialization only accelerated from the late twelfth century whereas open fields were, if Jones is correct, in existence as early as the mid‐ninth century, some other context would seem to be needed to explain the introduction of scattering. Bekar also takes issue with McCloskey's explanation of the open fields and scattering as an insurance strategy, showing that even if we assume that medieval peasants put safety first rather than being output‐maximizers, consolidated holdings were often the more logical option. However, why peasants (and, indeed, lords) did adopt scattering remains unclear although one way forward, one not considered by Richardson or Bekar, might be to ask why open‐field agriculture predominated in some regions of England but not others.…”

“…Bekar also takes issue with McCloskey's explanation of the open fields and scattering as an insurance strategy, showing that even if we assume that medieval peasants put safety first rather than being output‐maximizers, consolidated holdings were often the more logical option. However, why peasants (and, indeed, lords) did adopt scattering remains unclear although one way forward, one not considered by Richardson or Bekar, might be to ask why open‐field agriculture predominated in some regions of England but not others. Another approach might be to distinguish the reasons why open‐field agriculture was introduced from the reasons why it persisted, even under very different demographic or economic conditions.…”