IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/exehis/v47y2010i2p142-157.html

Valuing medieval annuities: Were corrodies underpriced?

Author

Listed:
  • Bell, Adrian
  • Sutcliffe, Charles

Abstract

Medieval bishops condemned and restricted the sale of corrodies (a type of annuity), partly on the grounds of their perceived unprofitability. The available data on the profitability of corrodies is limited and little analysed, and the episcopal condemnation of corrodies has been adopted by modern researchers. After recognising the difficulties, this paper applies an annuity pricing model to study corrody pricing. Given various assumptions, contrary to the established view, it is argued that the sale of corrodies was financially profitable for institutions. Finally, some reasons are considered for the negative attitude of contemporary and historical opinion towards the sale of corrodies.

Suggested Citation

  • Bell, Adrian & Sutcliffe, Charles, 2010. "Valuing medieval annuities: Were corrodies underpriced?," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 47(2), pages 142-157, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:exehis:v:47:y:2010:i:2:p:142-157
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014-4983(09)00039-4
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Adrian R. Bell & Chris Brooks & Tony Moore, 2008. "Interest in medieval accounts: Examples from England, 1272-1340," ICMA Centre Discussion Papers in Finance icma-dp2008-07, Henley Business School, University of Reading.
    2. Kotlikoff, Laurence J & Spivak, Avia, 1981. "The Family as an Incomplete Annuities Market," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 89(2), pages 372-391, April.
    3. Katja Rost & Emil Inauen & Margit Osterloh & Bruno S. Frey, 2008. "The Corporate Governance of Benedictine Abbeys: What can Stock Corporations Learn from Monasteries?," IEW - Working Papers 374, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    4. Black, Fischer & Scholes, Myron S, 1972. "The Valuation of Option Contracts and a Test of Market Efficiency," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 27(2), pages 399-417, May.
    5. Bell, Adrian R. & Brooks, Chris & Dryburgh, Paul, 2007. "Interest rates and efficiency in medieval wool forward contracts," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 361-380, February.
    6. Gregory Clark, 2007. "Introduction to A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World," Introductory Chapters, in: A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World, Princeton University Press.
    7. Jeffrey R. Brown & James M. Poterba, 1999. "Joint Life Annuities and Annuity Demand by Married Couples," NBER Working Papers 7199, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Mark Koyama, 2008. "Evading the 'Taint of Usury' Complex Contracts and Segmented Capital Markets," Economics Series Working Papers 412, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    9. John Hatcher, 1986. "Mortality in the Fifteenth Century: Some New Evidence," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 39(1), pages 19-38, February.
    10. Booth, G. Geoffrey & Gurun, Umit G., 2008. "Volatility clustering and the bid-ask spread: Exchange rate behavior in early Renaissance Florence," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 15(1), pages 131-144, January.
    11. Clark, Gordon L. & Munnell, Alicia H. & Orszag, J. Michael (ed.), 2006. "The Oxford Handbook of Pensions and Retirement Income," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199272464.
    12. Jeffrey R. Brown & Mark J. Warshawsky, 2001. "Longevity-Insured Retirement Distributions from Pension Plans: Market and Regulatory Issues," NBER Working Papers 8064, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Adrian Bell & Chris Brooks & Paul Dryburgh, 2005. "Leger est aprendre mes fort est arendre;: Wool, Debt and the Dispersal of Pipewell Abbey (1280 - 1330)," ICMA Centre Discussion Papers in Finance icma-dp2005-08, Henley Business School, University of Reading.
    14. J. Hirshleifer, 1958. "On the Theory of Optimal Investment Decision," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 66(4), pages 329-329.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Anita Boele & Tine de Moor, 2018. "‘Because family and friends got easily weary of taking care’: a new perspective on the specialization in the elderly care sector in early modern Holland," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 71(2), pages 437-463, May.
    2. Chilosi, David, 2014. "Risky Institutions: Political Regimes and the Cost of Public Borrowing in Early Modern Italy," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 74(3), pages 887-915, September.
    3. Poitras, Geoffrey, 2025. "More On The Origin Of Financial Economics: Early Contributions To Joint Life Annuity Valuation," Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Cambridge University Press, vol. 47(3), pages 339-362, September.
    4. repec:osf:socarx:ak6gu_v1 is not listed on IDEAS

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Milevsky, Moshe A. & Young, Virginia R., 2008. "Erratum to: "Annuitization and asset allocation": [Journal of Economic Dynamics & Control 31 (9) (2007) 3138-3177]," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 32(11), pages 3743-3744, November.
    2. Susanne Pech, 2004. "Adverse Selection with individual- and joint-life annuities," Economics working papers 2004-12, Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.
    3. Ivica Dus & Raimond Maurer & Olivia S. Mitchell, 2003. "Betting on Death and Capital Markets in Retirement: A Shortfall Risk Analysis of Life Annuities versus Phased Withdrawal Plans," Working Papers wp063, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.
    4. Pashchenko, Svetlana, 2013. "Accounting for non-annuitization," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 53-67.
    5. Brown, Jeffrey R., 2001. "Private pensions, mortality risk, and the decision to annuitize," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(1), pages 29-62, October.
    6. Hurwitz, Abigail & Sade, Orly & Winter, Eyal, 2020. "Unintended consequences of minimum annuity laws: An experimental study," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 208-222.
    7. Blake, David & Boardman, Tom, 2010. "Spend more today: Using behavioural economics to improve retirement expenditure decisions," MPRA Paper 34234, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Jeffrey R. Brown & Mark J. Warshawsky, 2001. "Longevity-Insured Retirement Distributions from Pension Plans: Market and Regulatory Issues," NBER Working Papers 8064, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Adrian R. Bell & Chris Brooks & Tony K. Moore, 2017. "Did Purchasing Power Parity Hold in Medieval Europe?," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 85(6), pages 682-709, December.
    10. Pang, Gaobo & Warshawsky, Mark, 2010. "Optimizing the equity-bond-annuity portfolio in retirement: The impact of uncertain health expenses," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 198-209, February.
    11. Morgan Kelly & Cormac Ó Gráda, 2014. "Living standards and mortality since the middle ages," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 67(2), pages 358-381, May.
    12. Jeffrey R. Brown, 2007. "Rational and Behavioral Perspectives on the Role of Annuities in Retirement Planning," NBER Working Papers 13537, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. repec:hum:wpaper:sfb649dp2009-022 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Mathias Kifmann, 2010. "The Design of Pension Pay Out Options When the Health Status during Retirement Is Uncertain," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 12(1), pages 127-149, February.
    15. Jeffrey R. Brown, 2000. "How Should We Insure Longevity Risk In Pensions And Social Security?," Issues in Brief ib-4, Center for Retirement Research.
    16. Thomas Post & Helmut Gründl & Hato Schmeiser, 2006. "Portfolio management and retirement: what is the best arrangement for a family?," Financial Markets and Portfolio Management, Springer;Swiss Society for Financial Market Research, vol. 20(3), pages 265-285, September.
    17. Shinichi Nishiyama, 2019. "The joint labor supply decision of married couples and the U.S. Social Security pension system," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 31, pages 277-304, January.
    18. Josiah, J. & Gough, O. & Haslam, J. & Shah, N., 2014. "Corporate reporting implication in migrating from defined benefit to defined contribution pension schemes: A focus on the UK," Accounting forum, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 18-37.
    19. Carlos Vidal-Melia & Ana Lejárraga-García, 2004. "The Bequest Motive And Single People’S Demand For Life Annuities," Public Economics 0405005, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Blake, David & Cairns, Andrew & Dowd, Kevin, 2008. "Turning pension plans into pension planes: What investment strategy designers of defined contribution pension plans can learn from commercial aircraft designers," MPRA Paper 33749, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    21. Ivica Dus & Raimond Maurer & Olivia S. Mitchell, 2005. "Betting on Death and Capital Markets in Retirement: A Shortfall Risk Analysis of Life Annuities," NBER Working Papers 11271, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:exehis:v:47:y:2010:i:2:p:142-157. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/622830 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.