Credit for the Poor, Investments for the Rich? Different Strategies for Investing and Saving Money in Medieval Tirol

Nicolussi-Köhler Stephan ()
Additional contact information
Nicolussi-Köhler Stephan: Universität Innsbruck, Institut für Geschichtswissenschaften und Europäische Ethnologie, Innrain 52, A-6020 Innsbruck Austria

Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte / Economic History Yearbook, 2025, vol. 66, issue 1, 93-130

Abstract: This paper provides an overview of the various financial resources that existed in medieval Tirol to meet financial needs, using notary registers and court records from the 14th century as sources. These provide ample evidence of an active capital and land market in rural areas, which offered various ways of saving and investing money. Saving and investment behaviour was crucial for coping with external adversities such as harvest failure, but also with life events (marriage, bringing up children, retirement), and households sought to manage these risks. The results show that the poor and the rich behaved differently when it comes to investing and saving, and that their behaviour was strongly influenced by access to different financial instruments.

Keywords: Rural Credit Market; Land Market; Annuities; Medieval History; Ländlicher Kreditmarkt; Bodenmarkt; Renten; Mittelalterliche Geschichte (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/jbwg-2025-0005 (text/html)

Related works:
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:bpj:jbwige:v:66:y:2025:i:1:p:93-130:n:1005

DOI: 10.1515/jbwg-2025-0005

Access Statistics for this article

Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte / Economic History Yearbook is currently edited by Dieter Ziegler

More articles in Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte / Economic History Yearbook from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().