IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/22307.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The economic history of sovereignty: communal responsibility, the extended family, and the firm

Author

Listed:
  • Boerner, Lars
  • Ritschl, Albrecht

Abstract

Economic institutions encompassing increasingly sophisticated concepts of risk-sharing and liability flourished in Europe since the High Middle Ages. These innovations occurred in an environment of fragmented local jurisdictions, not within the framework of the territorial state. In this short paper we attempt to sketch a unifying approach towards the interpretation of the emergence of these institutions. We argue that communal responsibility in medieval city states created incentives for excessive risk-taking by individual merchants, and that the emergence of firms mitigated this problem. We also find that entity shielding in the sense of Hansmann et al. (2006) arose endogenously and is not primarily the result of regulation by local authorities.

Suggested Citation

  • Boerner, Lars & Ritschl, Albrecht, 2008. "The economic history of sovereignty: communal responsibility, the extended family, and the firm," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 22307, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:22307
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/22307/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Greif,Avner, 2006. "Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521671347, Enero-Abr.
    2. Volckart, Oliver, 2004. "The economics of feuding in late medieval Germany," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 41(3), pages 282-299, July.
    3. Blomquist, Thomas W., 1971. "Commercial Association in Thirteenth-Century Lucca," Business History Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 45(2), pages 157-178, July.
    4. Shavell, S., 1986. "The judgment proof problem," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 6(1), pages 45-58, June.
    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. Madsen, Jakob B. & Robertson, Peter E. & Ye, Longfeng, 2024. "Lives versus livelihoods in the middle ages: The impact of the plague on trade over 400 years," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 162(C).
    2. Lars Boerner & Daniel Quint, 2023. "Medieval Matching Markets," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 64(1), pages 23-56, February.
    3. Christoph Engel & Urs Schweizer, 2009. "Editorial Preface," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 165(1), pages 1-4, March.
    4. Börner, Lars & Hatfield, John William, 2010. "The economics of debt clearing mechanisms," Discussion Papers 2010/27, Free University Berlin, School of Business & Economics.
    5. Hajikhameneh, Aidin, 2024. "Reputation or court: Individualism, collectivism, and the choice of enforcement mechanism in exchange," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 217(C), pages 184-206.
    6. repec:ehl:wpaper:66833 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Aidin Hajikhameneh & Jared Rubin, 2019. "Exchange in the Absence of Legal Enforcement: Reputation and Multilateral Punishment under Uncertainty," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 35(1), pages 192-237.

    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. repec:ehl:wpaper:22307 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. repec:ehl:wpaper:50815 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Ogilvie, Sheilagh & Carus, A.W., 2014. "Institutions and Economic Growth in Historical Perspective," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 8, pages 403-513, Elsevier.
    4. Sheilagh Ogilvie, 2007. "'Whatever Is, Is Right'?, Economic Institutions in Pre-Industrial Europe (Tawney Lecture 2006)," CESifo Working Paper Series 2066, CESifo.
    5. Yeon‐Koo Che & Kathryn E. Spier, 2008. "Strategic judgment proofing," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 39(4), pages 926-948, December.
    6. Miceli Thomas J. & Segerson Kathleen, 2013. "Liability versus Regulation for Dangerous Products When Consumers Vary in Their Susceptibility to Harm and May Misperceive Risk," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 9(3), pages 341-355, December.
    7. Coşgel, Metin M. & Miceli, Thomas J. & Rubin, Jared, 2012. "The political economy of mass printing: Legitimacy and technological change in the Ottoman Empire," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(3), pages 357-371.
    8. Gordon L Clark & Ashby H B Monk, 2014. "The Geography of Investment Management Contracts: The UK, Europe, and the Global Financial Services Industry," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 46(3), pages 531-549, March.
    9. Robert Roßner & Dimitrios Zikos, 2018. "The Role of Homogeneity and Heterogeneity Among Resource Users on Water Governance: Lessons Learnt from an Economic Field Experiment on Irrigation in Uzbekistan," Water Economics and Policy (WEP), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 4(03), pages 1-30, July.
    10. Fredy Cepeda-Lopez & Fredy Gamboa-Estrada & Carlos Leon-Rinc�n & Hern�n Rincon-Castro, 2022. "Colombian Liberalization and Integration into World Trade Markets: Much Ado about Nothing," Revista de Economía del Rosario, Universidad del Rosario, vol. 25(2), pages 1-44.
    11. Louis Corriveau, 2012. "Game theory and the kula," Rationality and Society, , vol. 24(1), pages 106-128, February.
    12. Mayshar, Joram & Moav, Omer & Neeman, Zvika, 2011. "Transparency, Appropriability and the Early State," CEPR Discussion Papers 8548, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    13. Fenske, James, 2014. "Trees, tenure and conflict: Rubber in colonial Benin," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 226-238.
    14. Bramoullé, Yann & Goyal, Sanjeev, 2016. "Favoritism," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 16-27.
    15. Luigi Guiso & Paola Sapienza & Luigi Zingales, 2016. "Long-Term Persistence," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 14(6), pages 1401-1436, December.
    16. Johnson, Noel D. & Koyama, Mark, 2017. "Jewish communities and city growth in preindustrial Europe," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 339-354.
    17. Mika Kallioinen, 2017. "Inter‐communal institutions in medieval trade," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 70(4), pages 1131-1152, November.
    18. Gérard Mondello, 2012. "La responsabilité environnementale des prêteurs : difficultés juridiques et ensemble des possibles," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 88(2), pages 257-278.
    19. van Zanden, Jan Luiten & Buringh, Eltjo & Bosker, Maarten, 2008. "From Baghdad to London: The Dynamics of Urban Growth in Europe and the Arab World, 800-1800," CEPR Discussion Papers 6833, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    20. Sanchez-Pages Santiago & Straub Stéphane, 2010. "The Emergence of Institutions," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 10(1), pages 1-38, September.
    21. Cason, Timothy N. & Mui, Vai-Lam, 2015. "Rich communication, social motivations, and coordinated resistance against divide-and-conquer: A laboratory investigation," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 146-159.
    22. Machiko Nissanke, 2015. "A Quest for Institutional Foundations Towards Inclusive Development in Sub-Saharan Africa," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2015-049, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • N0 - Economic History - - General

    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:ehl:lserod:22307. 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: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    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.