Violence is often viewed as an intrinsic feature of illicit markets, driven by competition, disputes, and predation. We argue that the connection between violence and markets is not exclusive to illicit markets and that in the absence of strong institutions these factors exist ubiquitously....

Hospitals were among the wealthiest organizations in medieval cities. Their directors managed portfolios consisting of real estate and financial instruments; as a result, they also handled large quantities of money. It has been suggested that they used these to provide a variety of financial...

This special issue focuses on the financial behaviour of different participants in European medieval and early modern financial markets. It extends our knowledge of the financial strategies employed by households, merchants, charities, city governments and corporations by asking what investment...

Not all major Italian cities of the late Middle Ages could rely on an established and organised system of public debt like Florence, Venice, Genoa, and others. The study of one such city, Bologna, reveals that whenever the city found itself in serious financial straits, outside of ad hoc...

This paper provides an overview of the various financial resources that existed in medieval Tirol to meet financial needs, using notary registers and court records from the 14 th century as sources. These provide ample evidence of an active capital and land market in rural areas, which offered...

The share of female inventors remains significantly lower than that of men in both developed and developing countries. This paper studies gender bias in patenting activity, using a unique dataset that matches Italian administrative employer-employee records both to patent data from the European...