Inter‐communal institutions in medieval trade

This article examines the institutional structure of medieval overseas trade to explain why trade thrived even in the absence of the state. The literature has dealt mainly with intra‐coalition or intra‐community relations. However, the literature does not answer the question of how institutions could be created that could support interaction between a large number of distant communities and between merchants who did not necessarily know one another. This article presents such an institution that prevailed in the Baltic Sea region in the late middle ages, referred to here as the inter‐communal conciliation mechanism. In case of a dispute, conciliation took place between town councils, rather than the merchants involved in the dispute, thus combining individual liability and communal enforcement. Exploration of the documents reveals a task‐specific regularity of behaviour, which was the general practice among merchants to turn to the council of their own community when they had problems in a foreign town, instead of being obliged to solve disputes by themselves. This institution provided a permanent, centralized, and relatively impartial enforcement mechanism to respond to breaches. It was therefore well adapted to large, at least partially anonymous markets, such as the Baltic Sea region, with dozens of towns and thousands of merchants.     

The organization of the grain trade in the early Roman Empire

Rome was an exceedingly large city at the start of the Roman Empire, and it required massive grain imports to feed its population. We argue that Roman merchants organized these imports and that they used a variety of mechanisms to deal with the informational problems of long‐distance trade at that time. They used general institutions of Rome, such as its legal and social structures, as well as specific mercantile institutions, such as contracts, companies, and invoices. They exploited information in the Roman social structure as well as in the facilities for trade. This combination of social and economic institutions enabled Roman merchants to operate on as large a scale as any other pre‐industrial merchant group.     

Why Danish credit co-operatives were so unimportant

Abstract

Denmark's credit co-operatives were introduced relatively late and were never as important to the Danish financial system as credit co-operatives in several similar European countries. This experience stands in contrast to the experience of other co-operative enterprises in Denmark, most notably co-operative creameries. We argue that the Danish experience does not reflect a lack of need for such institutions or an inability to adapt them to Danish conditions. Rather, in the 1860s rural Danish people had succeeded in adapting another form of financial institution, the savings bank, to serve the needs of the small borrowers who elsewhere were the main clientele of the credit co-operative. Thus much of the need for credit co-operatives had been satisfied by another institution. The Danish experience illustrates both the adaptability of financial institutions and the sensitivity of co-operatives to competition for their niche in the financial system.     

商业信用:基于企业融资动机的实证研究

商业信用是企业从外部市场进行短期融资的重要组成部分。本文采用我国上市公司2000年至2004年的数据实证研究了商业信用作为企业外部融资方式的决定因素。实证结果发现企业获得的商业信用与企业规模、财务杠杆、销售增长率以及国有股比例呈显著正相关关系．而与短期银行借款比例以厦毛利润率呈显著负相关关系。这些发现表明，在我国目前所处的融资环境下。商业信用已经成为企业的重要融资手段。与银行信贷相比。商业信用具有一定的融资比较优势，作为提供商业信用的企业，对客户的经营状况等信息的了解更有效。     

The credit relationship between Henry III and merchants of Douai and Ypres, 1247–70

This article looks at an important but neglected aspect of medieval sovereign debt, namely ‘accounts payable’ owed by the Crown to merchants and employees. It focuses on the unusually well‐documented relationship between Henry III, King of England between 1216 and 1272, and Flemish merchants from the towns of Douai and Ypres, who provided cloth on credit to the royal wardrobe. From the surviving royal documents, we reconstruct the credit advanced to the royal wardrobe by the merchants of Ypres and Douai for each year between 1247 and 1270, together with the king's repayment history. The interactions between the king and the merchants are then analysed. The insights from this analysis are applied to the historical data to explain the trading decisions made by the merchants during this period, as well as why the strategies of the Yprois sometimes differed from those of the Douaissiens.     

The German Hanse and Bergen – new perspectives on an old subject

Abstract

The Hanseatic League and her kontors (trading posts) were an integral part of the medieval trade system in Northern Europe. Hanse merchants dominated many markets in this region and managed to maintain a monopoly-like role in towns like Novgorod and Bergen for many centuries. Consequently, one focus of historical research about the Hanseatic League lay on the mechanisms that enabled the Hanse merchants to keep that strong of a position for such a long time.

This article is part of the discussion about this topic. Based on Lübeck merchants with business interest in the Norwegian town of Bergen, the so-called Bergenfahrers (Bergen travellers), it will give new insights into the Hansards' economical and social organization. The three main points are (a) the integration of the Bergen market in the Hanseatic trade network as an intermediary trading place on the vivid East–West route of Hanse trade; (b) the importance of the Bergenfahrers within the Hanse merchants' economical, social and political networks; and (c) the structure of the Bergenfahrers network patterns in the late Middle Ages.

In addition to new insights into the important role of Bergen and the Bergenfahrers within Lübeck's and the other Wendish Hanse towns' trading system, this articles provides further proof for the usefulness of the methods of Social Network Analysis in medieval economic research.     

FTA、联盟外部性与多哈困境

WTO多边贸易体制的困境使得谈判主体达成一致协议的交易成本不断提高,利益成员在多哈回合不能实质突破的情况下会积极寻求体制外的有效安排。自由贸易协定自然导致联盟外部性,领导国对多边谈判议价和序列谈判议价的选择取决于跟随国存在正或负的联盟外部性。现实情况表明美国更倾向于自由贸易协定的建设,而客观形成了对多边贸易体制的阻碍作用。中国自由贸易协定建设起步较晚,应积极推动与不同发展程度国家贸易磋商与谈判,以加强中国外贸可持续发展的战略合作。     

Alien finance and the development of the English economy, 1285–13111

The contribution of alien, particularly Italian, investment to the development of the medieval English economy has provoked opposing views which hitherto have had to rely chiefly on customs records and evidence of Italian loans to the state for statistical evidence. These, though, vary in their coverage and do not record the inland trade. This article uses the Statute Merchant certificates of debt from 1285 to analyse changing levels of commercial investment by alien and denizen merchants throughout all areas of the kingdom. It shows that Italian investment was declining from the 1280s in line with falling imports of foreign silver. It discusses the causes of this decline, and the effect on alien and denizen credit of imports of counterfeit sterling coins produced by European mints. It relates these financial developments in England, France, and Flanders to the sequence of events which led to English merchants increasing their numbers and mercantile capital at the beginning of the fourteenth century when they were first able to establish their domination of the country's export trade in wool.     

Understanding the role of trade agreements in Indonesia’s FDI

In this paper, we develop the hypothesis that trade agreements influence foreign direct investment (FDI). We extend the conventional model of FDI determinants to accommodate the role of trade agreements. Fitting Indonesian data to this model, we discover strong evidence that, while both bilateral and multilateral trade agreements positively influence Indonesia’s FDI, multilateral agreements have a larger effect. We further distinguish FDI by sector and find sector-specific trade agreements play an active role: these agreements positively influence FDI in the primary and service sectors, but not in the manufacturing sector. We also find that trade agreements positively influence FDI through the export and total factor productivity channels, and less so through the economic growth channel.     

Have Asian trade agreements reduced trade costs?

Regionalization of trade in East Asia increased in the 1990s, and has been accompanied by a growing number of trade agreements. The wave of trade agreements is in part a response to the need to facilitate trade in order to make regional value chains more profitable. This paper draws on a rich Australian database for the period 1990–2007, which allows us to control for distance and commodity characteristics and to identify cross-country variation in trade costs. The results, indicating the extent to which East Asian countries’ trade costs have fallen over the regionalization period relative to changes in other regions’ trade costs, provide evidence of the existence of effective policy steps to facilitate trade and also that these steps have multilateral as well as bilateral or regional benefits.     

Lessons for Africa from Indonesia's Experience in Smallscale Entrepreneurial Finance

Abstract: Indonesia has developed some very successful credit schemes for both men and women smallscale entrepreneurs and farmers in rural and urban areas; one is a state-owned commercial bank which reaches out into the poorer areas; one is owned by local governments, but supervised by the state-owned commercial bank; and one is owned and operated by the provincial government. Can the factors which led to their success be transferrable to the African setting ? The authors argue that they can, but that the high population density, the vibrant economy and the relative stability of the price level are important positive factors in Indonesia not found in sub-Saharan Africa. Nevertheless, the paying of a market rate of interest on savings and encouragement of savings, the integration of the credit scheme into the commercial banking system, an interest rate on loans which covers the spread between savings borrowing and costs plus administrative costs, high levels of repayment, untargeted credit, good management, financial viability of each branch unit, and convenience in location are transferrable and should be part of African institutions leading to the smallscale sector.     

环境不确定性、管理者能力与商业信用融资

选取2017-2021年我国沪深A股上市公司数据，运用多元线性回归模型实证检验了环境不确定性对商业信用融资的影响，并探究管理者能力在环境不确定性与商业信用融资之间的调节作用。研究表明，环境不确定性的提高会显著减少公司的商业信用融资，而管理者能力可以有效缓解二者之间的负向关系，进行稳健性检验后结果依然成立。研究结果对企业缓解商业信用融资约束，以及相关部门规范商业信用市场具有一定借鉴意义。     

Institutional choice in the governance of the early Atlantic sugar trade: diasporas,markets, and courts

The expanding sugar trade linking Portugal, Brazil, and the Netherlands in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries required enforcement mechanisms to guarantee that overseas agents would act honestly and diligently. While the recent literature emphasizes that multiple mechanisms were substitutes in addressing this problem, this article highlights that merchants chose different mechanisms to govern distinct types of transactions and explains why. A reputational mechanism relying on social and economic constraints within an ethnic diaspora governed more complex and higher‐value arrangements. A different mechanism linking economic incentives to professional reputations across the diasporas plying this trade route predominated in simpler and smaller transactions. Finally, long‐distance and transnational judicial enforcement supplemented these two reputational mechanisms. Capable of matching the value and complexity of transactions with the attributes of governing mechanisms, merchants were able to diversify their transactions, expand the market for agents, better allocate agents to tasks, and stimulate competition among them. The resulting decrease in agency costs was critical in such a significantly competitive market as the sugar trade. Evolving institutional choice thus reinforced the expansion of trade. These hypotheses are corroborated by data from a prosopography of merchants of Jewish origin, derived from notarial records from Oporto and Amsterdam, and from Inquisition files.     

The Evolution of Australian Monetary Policy in the 1950s

The 1950s in Australia was a decade of major change in both central banking and the financial system. The changes fed upon one another: financial innovation responded to monetary policy; the authorities adapted their strategy in response. The private banks resisted the harnessing of their balance sheets to policy, and a protracted process of conflict and compromise unfolded. Meanwhile, the growth of non‐bank financial institutions undermined bank‐centred policy. Official controls on bank interest rates opened a space for the new intermediaries. The central bank's attempt to restrain their growth contributed to a credit squeeze at the turn of the 1960s.     

To Market! To Market! The Changing Role of the Australian Timber Merchant, 1945–c.1965

In urban Australia, timber merchants have been the most important of all building supply dealers. In the 1940s they had close ties to sawmillers while providing timber and credit to contractors. A changing business climate forced them to adapt: sawmills and large builders began to deal directly; competition from timber 'substitutes' cut profits; above all, demand from amateur builders soared. Merchants responded by diversifying, relocating, and offering advice and credit, although more slowly than their North American counterparts because of their closer linkages to the timber trade. Targeted at amateurs, these adaptations also helped small commercial operators to remain competitive with a new breed of project builders.     

兼容性制度竞争:双层对冲与地区制度的嵌套设计北大核心

地区制度的兴起增加了全球治理机制的复杂性。竞争性多边主义理论强调制度竞争会导致国际机制的碎片化和规则冲突。制度聚合理论则认为制度背景会强化规则的一致性,甚至形成制度服从。这种冲突—聚合的二分法不足以分析地区制度与多边制度之间关系的复杂现实。作者提出一个双层对冲的分析框架,以解释地区制度与核心多边制度间的联系机制;一方面,地区成员要通过建立地区制度寻求外部选项,实现对现有多边制度的制衡。另一方面,地区成员又离不开现有多边制度,需要借用现有的多边制度资源来解决地区制度建设中的机会主义问题。为了实现双层对冲,地区成员国会根据地区制度的系统冲击效应和投资报偿结构,设计不同的制度嵌套。作者比较了金融救助领域的欧洲稳定机制、清迈倡议多边化以及拉美储备基金等地区金融安排,其结果符合预期。双层对冲框架下的兼容性制度竞争有利于推动国际制度的渐进变迁,限制了大国在国际秩序转型中的冲突烈度,为世界政治的和平权力转移提供了可能。     

出口固定成本、融资约束与中国企业出口参与

本文基于新新贸易理论和中国企业面临融资约束的现实,建立离散动态出口模型,发现克服出口固定成本和缓解融资约束可以促进企业出口参与。进而运用2004～2008年中国七十余万家制造业企业数据,从内源融资、银行信贷和商业信贷3个维度衡量融资约束,实证检验理论分析。结果发现,克服出口固定成本是企业参与出口的关键,商业信贷对企业出口参与贡献最大,银行信贷次之,内源融资贡献最小。细化样本后发现,克服出口固定成本仍然是出口的关键,但是,无内源融资企业较之有内源融资企业,内资企业较之外资企业,出口融资都更多依赖商业信贷和银行信贷;国有企业出口融资更多依赖银行信贷,而民营企业更多依赖商业信贷。变化融资约束衡量方法后,结果依然稳健。     

Why do trade costs vary?

As tariffs have fallen, it is apparent that trade costs are a significant obstacle to international trade and that they vary from country to country. The gap between the cif and fob value of a trade flow is a useful measure of aggregate trade costs, but only if the measure is based on a consistent volume of trade; mirror statistics are unsuitable. Using high quality Australian import data disaggregated at the HS 6-digit level, we find large country-by-country variations in trade costs. Distance, weight and size account for part of the variation in trade costs. Indicators of institutional quality pick up some of the variation in trade costs, but the relationship is not uniform across mode of transport and commodities; exporting countries’ institutional quality is more strongly related to trade costs for air freight than sea freight, and the relationship is commodity-specific and strongest for manufactured goods. Country-specific characteristics influencing trade costs provide a link between institutions and economic development.     

Financial intermediation,regulation and the formal microcredit sector in South Africa

This article evaluates demand- and supply-side aspects of the formal microcredit sector in South Africa and the environment in which the sector is regulated. Although South Africa has a competitive financial sector relative to a sample of upper middle-income countries, the historical bias towards formal sector banking resulted in a lack of appropriate credit instruments for poorer people. In 1992, new regulations facilitated the legalisation of microfinance institutions and, by 2000, the sector had grown to over 2 per cent of total credit extended by the monetary sector, with over 1 300 institutions supplying microcredit to the public. The article presents the first statistics of different types of microcredit institutions as well as some of their disbursement trends, recorded since 1999 by the Micro Finance Regulatory Council. Thereafter, the demand for credit is assessed between 1995 and 2000, before best-practice regulation and South Africa's degree of compliance are discussed.     

RATIONING, SPILLOVER, AND INTERLINKING IN CREDIT MARKETS: THE CASE OF RURAL PUNJAB

A parallel market structure may exhibit extensive rationingin the regulated segment, and hence spillover of unsatisfieddemand into the unregulated segment of the market. In the lattersegment, the borrower can choose to bundle loan contracts withoutput marketing through the lender. Using data on Punjabi cultivators,econometric estimation of such a structure yields three principalfindings: (i) most borrowers and non-borrowers were rationedin the regulated market; (ii) demand for credit was fairly inelasticwith respect to the interest rate; (iii) a contractual provisiontying credit to output marketing made informal lenders willingto advance much bigger loans. One pana and a quarter is the lawful rate of interest per monthon one hundred panas, five panas for purposes of trade, tenpanas for those going through forests, twenty panas for thosegoing by sea. For one charging or making another charge a ratebeyond that, the punishment shall be the lowest fine for violence,for witnesses, each one of them, half the fine. If, however,the King is unable to ensure protection, the Qudge) should takeinto consideration the usual practice among creditors and debtors.The Kautiliya Arthasastra (a fourth century BC work on kingshipand statecraft).