The Low Countries' Export Trade in Textiles with the Mediterranean Basin, 1200-1600: A Cost-Benefit Analysis of Comparative Advantages in Overland and Maritime Trade Routes
This paper challenges the conventional wisdom in European economic history that long-distance maritime transport was always more cost-effective than overland trade routes. Thus the majority of historians in the past century have attributed the rapid decline of the medieval Champagne Fairs, governing the textile trades between the Low Countries, northern France, and Italy, to the establishment of an effective and permanent' direct sea-route between Italy and north-west Europe from the early 14th century (though the first, a Genoese galley, can be dated to 1277). The paper concludes by examining the various factors and forces that led to a fall in transport and transaction costs in the international textile trades, via the overland routes, including river routes, between north-west Europe and the Mediterranean basin from the later 15th to early 17th centuries.
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Paper provided by University of Toronto, Department of Economics in its series Working Papers with number
munro-99-01.
Length: 33 pages Date of creation: 10 Jul 1999 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:tor:tecipa:munro-99-01
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Find related papers by JEL classification: F1 - International Economics - - Trade F2 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business L1 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance N6 - Economic History - - Manufacturing and Construction N7 - Economic History - - Economic History: Transport, International and Domestic Trade, Energy, and Other Services
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