International Trade and Institutional Change: Medieval Venice's Response to Globalization

Diego Puga and Daniel Trefler

No 18288, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: International trade can have profound effects on domestic institutions. We examine this proposition in the context of medieval Venice circa 800-1350. We show that (initially exogenous) increases in long-distance trade enriched a large group of merchants and these merchants used their new-found muscle to push for constraints on the executive i.e., for the end of a de facto hereditary Doge in 1032 and for the establishment of a parliament or Great Council in 1172. The merchants also pushed for remarkably modern innovations in contracting institutions (such as the colleganza) that facilitated large-scale mobilization of capital for risky long-distance trade. Over time, a group of extraordinarily rich merchants emerged and in the almost four decades following 1297 they used their resources to block political and economic competition. In particular, they made parliamentary participation hereditary and erected barriers to participation in the most lucrative aspects of long-distance trade. We document this 'oligarchization' using a unique database on the names of 8,103 parliamentarians and their families' use of the colleganza. In short, long-distance trade first encouraged and then discouraged institutional dynamism and these changes operated via the impacts of trade on the distribution of wealth and power.

JEL-codes: F1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-08
Note: ITI
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Published as “International Trade and Institutional Change: Medieval Venice's Response to Globalization” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 129(2) (May 2014):753–821. (With Diego Puga.)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w18288.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: International Trade and Institutional Change: Medieval Venice’s Response to Globalization (2014)
Working Paper: International Trade and Institutional Change: Medieval Venice’s Response to Globalization (2013)
Working Paper: International trade and institutional change: Medieval Venice's response to globalization (2012)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:18288

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w18288

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().