'Money markets and trade’ defining provincial financial agents in England and Japan

Mina Ishizu

Economic History Working Papers from London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Economic History

Abstract: The paper aims to offer an introduction to provincial financial agents as the key components in provincial-metropolitan integration of money markets. It establishes that PFAs engaged in de facto banking and played an important role in local money markets. Both in England and in Tokugawa Japan, they were responsible for making decisions whether or not to establish a connection with financial agents in the commercial centres. The paper also considers some of the financial services facilitated by the existence of financial connections between metropolitan and provincial financial agents. In both countries, remittances and (particularly in England) investment were important financial activities facilitated by such connections, while bill-rediscounting appears to have been relevant only in the English case. On the other hand, in Japan domain-related business activity forged financial links with the commercial centres, links in which provincial financial agents played a major role. Also the expansion of inter-domainal private trade may have further stimulated the inter-regional financial linkages in the late Tokugawa period.

Keywords: financial agents; provincial towns; inter-regional financial linkages; early industrialisation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N20 N23 N25 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29 pages
Date: 2020-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ban, nep-cwa, nep-fdg and nep-his
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:wpaper:103159

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