How persistent are cultural traits? This paper uses data on anti-Semitism in Germany and finds continuity at the local level over more than half a millennium. When the Black Death hit Europe in 1348-50, killing between one third and one half of the population, its cause was unknown. Many...

Contingent sovereign debt can create important welfare gains. Nonetheless, there is almost no issuance today. Using hand-collected archival data, we examine the first known case of large-scale use of state-contingent sovereign debt in history. Philip II of Spain entered into hundreds of...

Lending to early modern monarchs could be very profitable, yet highly risky. International financiers unlocked the excess returns in sovereign debt markets by parceling out the risk and transferring it to downstream investors in exchange for financial intermediation fees. We link two sovereign...

Does fiscal consolidation lead to social unrest? Using cross-country evidence for the period 1919 to 2008, we examine the extent to which societies become unstable after budget cuts. The results show a clear correlation between fiscal retrenchment and instability. We test if the relationship...

Contingent sovereign debt has the potential to create important welfare gains--but actual issuance is rare. Using hand-collected archival data, we examine the first known case of large-scale issuance of contingent sovereign debt in history. Philip II of Spain entered into hundreds of contracts...

Analysis of the financial revolution in England has often focused on changes in public debt management and the interest rates paid by the state. Much less is known about the evolution of the financial system providing credit to individual borrowers. We document the transition from goldsmith to...

Why was England first? And why Europe? We present a probabilistic model that builds on big-push models by Murphy, Shleifer and Vishny (1989), combined with hierarchical preferences. The interaction of exogenous demographic factors (in particular the English low-pressure variant of the European...