The Prudent Peasant: New Findings on Open Fields
修正了中世纪农民在敞田制下分散地块的传统解释，通过新证据表明风险规避是理解农民行为的关键，而非情感或社会主义。
The usual picture of the medieval peasantry is based on nineteenth-century scholarship, which has proven difficult to dislodge from educated minds. This article continues the revision of an important detail in the picture, the scattering of plots in open fields. Some recent work on the subject by Robert Allen and Gregory Clark is midly disputed, and new evidence is presented that risk avoidance is the key to understanding peasant behavior. The reason for the scattering was not sentiment or socialism. Peasants were not perhaps rational in every detail; but they were prudent.