 Small is beautiful: the efficiency of credit markets in the late medieval HollandJan Luiten van Zanden, Jaco Zuijderduijn () and Tine De Moor European Review of Economic History, 2012, vol. 16, issue 1, 3-22 Abstract: In this paper, we analyse the functioning of private capital markets in Holland in the late medieval period. We argue that in the absence of banks and state agencies involved in the supply of credit, entrepreneurs' access to credit was determined by two interrelated factors. The first was the quality of property rights protection and the extent to which properties could be used as collateral. The second was the level of interest in borrowing money at the time as well as such borrowing compared with the interest rates on risk-free investments. For our case study, the small town of Edam and its hinterland, De Zeevang, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, we demonstrate that properties were used as collateral on a large scale and that interest rates on both small and large loans were relatively low (about 6 percent). As a result, many households (whether headed by men or women) owned financial assets and/or debts, and the degree of financial sophistication was relatively high. Copyright , Oxford University Press. Date: 2012 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:ereveh:v:16:y:2012:i:1:p:3-22 Access Statistics for this article European Review of Economic History is currently edited by Christopher M. Meissner, Steven Nafziger and Alessandro Nuvolari More articles in European Review of Economic History from European Historical Economics Society |
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