The Economic History of Sovereignty: Communal Responsibility, the Extended Family, and the Firm

Lars Boerner and Albrecht Ritschl

Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), 2009, vol. 165, issue 1, 99-112

Abstract: Economic institutions encompassing increasingly sophisticated concepts of risksharing and liability flourished in Europe beginning in 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, KRAAKMAN, AND SQUIRE [2006] arose endogenously and is not primarily the result of regulation by local authorities.

JEL-codes: D14 L14 N23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mohrsiebeck.com/en/article/the-economi ... 28093245609787369697 (text/html)
Fulltext access is included for subscribers to the printed version.

Related works:
Working Paper: The economic history of sovereignty: communal responsibility, the extended family, and the firm (2008)
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:mhr:jinste:urn:sici:0932-4569(200903)165:1_99:tehosc_2.0.tx_2-4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
Mohr Siebeck GmbH & Co. KG, P.O.Box 2040, 72010 Tübingen, Germany

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE) is currently edited by Gerd Mühlheußer and Bayer, Ralph-C

More articles in Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE) from Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Thomas Wolpert ().