The Lasting Damage to Mortality of Early-Life Adversity: Evidence from the English Famine of the late 1720s

This paper explores the long-term impact on mortality of exposure to early-life hardship. Using survival analysis, we document that birth during the great English famine of the late 1720s manifest itself in an increased death risk throughout life among those who survive the famine years. Using demographic data from the Cambridge Group’s Population History of England, we find that the death risk of affected individuals who survived to age 10 is up to 66 percent higher than that of their control–group counterparts (those born in the five years following the famine). This corresponds to a loss of life-expectancy of more than 12 years. We find that effects differ geographically as well as with the socioeconomic status of the household, with less well-off (manual-worker) families and families living in the English Midlands being hit the hardest. Evidence does not suggest, however, that children born in the five years prior to the famine suffered increased death risk.Death Risk; Malthus; Longevity; Positive Checks; Scarring Effect; Selection Effect

Prices, Wages and Fertility in Pre-Industrial England

A two-sector Malthusian model is formulated in terms of a cointegrated vector autoregressive (CVAR) model on error correction form. The model allows for both agricultural product wages and relative prices to affect fertility. The model is estimated using new data for the pre-industrial period in England, and the analysis reveals a strong, positive effect of agricultural wages as well as a small and, surprisingly, positive effect of real agricultural prices on fertility. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that there is constant returns to scale with respect to labour in the manufacturing sector and strongly decreasing returns to scale in the agricultural sector.Malthus; cointegration; pre-industrial England

The Child Quantity-Quality Trade-Off During the Industrial Revolution in England

We take Gary Becker's child quantity-quality trade-off hypothesis to the historical record, investigating the causal link from family size to the literacy status of offspring using data from Anglican parish registers, c. 1700-1830. Extraordinarily forhistorical data, the parish records enable us to control for parental literacy, longevity and social class, as well as sex and birth order of offspring. In a world without modern contraception and among the couples whose children were not prenuptially conceived we are able to explore a novel source of exogenous variation in family size: marital fecundability as measured by the time interval from the marriage to the first birth. Consistent with previous findings among historical populations, we document a large and significantly negative effect of family size on children's literacy.Child Quantity-Quality Trade-Off; Demographic Transition; Industrial Revolution; Instrumental Variable Analysis; Human Capital Formation

Forestry Club

The Game Banquet and Spring Foresters Day were both successful. With Glenn Johnson pushing his staff the \u2771 Ames Forester was the best ever

Acquirers´ value creation in Green M&A Deals: a cross-sectional analysis of North America and Europe

This thesis seeks to investigate acquirers’ post-acquisition performance when buying a "green"company, looking specifically at differences between North America and Europe. I conductcross-sectional OLS analyses on 423 deals in North America and Europe, between 2000 and2016, focusing on accounting-based performance measures. My results suggest acquirers arebetter off buying a green company in North America rather than Europe, despite having to payhigher transaction premiums for companies with lower average ESG scores across the pond.However, my findings fail to confirm previous research that acquiring green companies createsvalue for bidders in the first place

Subcutaneous Blood Flow in Psoriasis

The simultaneously recorded disappearance rates of 133Xe from subcutaneous adipose tissue in the crus were studied in 10 patients with psoriasis vulgaris using atraumatic labeling of the tissue in lesional skin (LS) areas and symmetrical, nonlesional skin (NLS) areas. Control experiments were performed bilaterally in 10 younger, healthy subjects.The subcutaneous washout rate constant was significantly higher in LS, 0.79 ± 0.05 min-1. 102 compared to the washout rate constant of NLS, 0.56 ± 0.07 min-1. 102 (p < 0.05), or the washout rate constant in the normal subjects, 0.46 ± 0.17 min-1. 102 (p <0.01). The mean washout rate constant in NLS was 25% higher than the mean washout rate constant in the normal subjects. The difference was, however, not statistically significant.Differences in the washout rate constants might be due to abnormal subcutaneous tissue-to-blood partition (λ) in the LS—and therefore not reflecting the real differences in the subcutaneous blood flow (SBF). The λ for133Xe was therefore measured—using a double isotope washout method (133Xe and [133I]antipyrine)—in symmetrical sites of the lateral crus in LS and NLS of 10 patients with psoriasis vulgaris and in 10 legs of normal subjects. In LS the λ was 4.52 ± 1.67 ml/g, which was not statistically different from that of NLS, 5.25 ± 2.19 ml/g (p < 0.05), nor from that of normal subcutaneous tissue, 4.98 ± 1.04 ml/g (p < 0.05).Calculations of the SBF using the obtained λ values gave a significantly higher SBF in LS, 3.57 ± 0.23 ml/100 g/min, compared to SBF in the NLS, 2.94 ± 0.37 ml/100 g/min (p < 0.05). There was no statistically significant difference between SBF in NLS and SBF in the normal subjects.The increased SBF in LS of psoriatics might be a secondary phenomenon to an increased heat loss in the lesional skin

Dieter Rams: Ethics and Modern Philosophy. What Legacy Today?

German industrial designer Dieter Rams has turned eighty this year. His attitude towards product and industrial design, which he has been developing since the 1950s, once again arouses keen interest today. On the occasion of his birthday, a major German daily news paper saw in him the representative of a "present–day Modernism that is not as megalomanic as that of the 20s, 30s and 50s" and also not "the adolescent unleashing that we erroneously call Postmodernism." A revision of Postmodernism or, more correctly, a new "revision of Modernism", certainly seems to have come to stay. Konstantin Grcic, undoubtedly the most prominent German designer active today, wrote in the same newspaper one day before: "the product lines that Rams developed for the Braun and Vitsoe corporations have founded our notion of representational form and function. The once - from the pre–Grcic generation - so-called cool technocrat Dieter Rams, has now been rediscovered by virtue of his "almost romantic look at the manufacture of products."

Innovation Modeling Grid

This technical document presents the committee driven innovation modeling methodology "Innovation Modeling Grid" in detail. This document is the successor of three publications on IMoG and focuses on presenting all details of the methodologyComment: ~170p, many figures, technical documen