Hunger and market dynamics in pre-modern communities: Insights into the effects of market intervention from a multi-agent model

Authored by Ulf Christian Ewert, Mathias Roehl, Adelinde M. Uhrmacher

Date Published: 2007

Sponsors: No sponsors listed

Platforms: JAMES

Model Documentation: Other Narrative

Model Code URLs: Model code not found

Abstract

Food shortages and hunger had been a great threat to the standard of living in urban communities in the Middle Ages and in early modem times. In order to cope with this sort of critical events, local governments and municipal councils commonly tried to control market dynamics, but it is not clear, whether in cases like this the typical market reaction of rising prices of foodstuffs and wages could really be moderated in the long-run through an intervention in markets. In the present article, a simplified multi-agent-based model of the pre-modern urban economy is used which allows a simulation of effects that different strategies of crisis management had on the medium-term and long-range economic and demographic developments in an urban community experiencing a food shortage. Intervention in markets turns out to be a strategic choice of local authorities by which very likely wealth-destroying consequences of food shortages or even famines could be reduced to some extent. A successful intervention preventing a temporary food shortage turning into a substantial nutritional crisis nonetheless had to be goal-directed and of complex design, and showed its full wealth-keeping effects only after a considerably long period of time.

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