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 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...

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...

Many people born outside England, defined as aliens, lived in late medieval London. Despite a growing literature on immigration in late medieval England and acceptance that speech was highly significant in premodern societies, studies of native-alien coexistence in London have focused on...

In this study we evaluate the role that Mediterranean Medieval trade with Africa and the Middle-East still plays today in Italian politics by shaping the attitudes towards migrants of individuals that live close to Medieval ports. Trade connections between Medieval ports and Muslim Africa and...

Economic downturns can create conditions for conflict that may occur along religious or ethnic lines. In this paper, we provide arguably the first empirical evidence of this phenomenon in medieval India. Using centuries of geo-referenced data we document a positive relationship between weather...

This chapter surveys the writings of medieval Jewish rabbis on usury during 1050-1565. These writings belonged to three literary genres: legal, ethical/pietistic, and Biblical commentary. After surveying the moralistic condemnations of usury by medieval rabbis, I illustrate three theoretical...

Guinnane and Hoffman (subsequently GH) comment on two of our papers: Voigtländer and Voth: “Persecution Perpetuated” (2012, subsequently PP) and Satyanath, Voigtländer and Voth: Bowling for Fascism (2017, subsequently BF). They allege that our econometric results are fragile and depend on...

"For the first time, The Merchant of Venice looks at the place and role of the late medieval merchant nobility in the great international trade that took place in the world known at the time, from China and Asia to Flanders and England. These merchants who travelled the world were also...

The establishment of Christianity in the late- and post-Roman world caused an economic as well as a religious revolution, but, while a great deal of attention has been paid to the religious developments of the period, the impact of the establishment of the Church on the economy has attracted...

The persistence literature in economics and related disciplines connects recent outcomes to events long ago. This influential literature marks a promising development but has drawn criticism. We discuss two prominent examples that ground the rise of the Nazi Party in distant historical roots....

Earlier research on poverty failed to provide us with consistent measures of its prevalence across space and time. This is due to the limitations of the available sources and to the difficulty of applying to them the poverty definitions of modern social science. This article discusses different...

The standard political economy narrative of representative assemblies in Western Europe is one of political bargaining and credible commitments. Monarchs sought to bargain with the leading men of the realms, exchanging their commitments on various policies for revenues and other resources. This...

Guinnane and Hoffman (subsequently GH) comment on two of our papers: Voigtländer and Voth: "Persecution Perpetuated" (2012, subsequently PP) and Satyanath, Voigtländer and Voth: Bowling for Fascism (2017, subsequently BF). They allege that our econometric results are fragile and depend on...

The persistence literature in economics and related disciplines connects recent outcomes to events long ago. This influential literature marks a promising development but has drawn criticism. We discuss two prominent examples that ground the rise of the Nazi Party in distant historical roots....

This volume presents a new history of Orsanmichele, covering the centuries before the Renaissance. It explores the Florentine grain market, the piazza of Orsanmichele and its loggias, and Orsanmichele s important confraternity and Madonnas during the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries.

"This book synthesizes a research on the so-called "Tang-Song social transformation" and "society of moneyed elite" in ancient China to examine the social changes that took place in the Tang and Song dynasties. The ancient Chinese "society of moneyed elite" theory provides a conceptual frame of...