Economy of Ragusa, 1300–1800: The Tiger of Medieval Mediterranean

Oleh Havrylyshyn () and Nora Srzentic ()
Additional contact information
Oleh Havrylyshyn: Munk School of Global Affairs/CERES, University of Toronto, 1 Devonshire Place, Toronto, ON, Canada M5S 3K7.
Nora Srzentic: Department of Financial Economics, Ghent University, 9000 Gent, Belgium.

Comparative Economic Studies, 2013, vol. 55, issue 2, 231 pages

Abstract: Using data for proxying economic activity, we confirm historical consensus that the medieval Republic of Ragusa (now Dubrovnik) was a prosperous small open economy, rivaling bigger competitors like Venice. More tentatively, we test a number of hypotheses on the determinants of success, finding partial evidence that Ragusa had strong fundamentals with prudent finances, effective rule of law, good governance, social fairness, business-friendly institutions, and trade openness. Ragusa may be an early example of a ‘Tiger’ economy with growth-promoting institutions. Future research should test the ‘resilience hypothesis’ that such economies are best able to deal with external shocks.

Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ces/journal/v55/n2/pdf/ces201314a.pdf Link to full text PDF (application/pdf)
http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ces/journal/v55/n2/full/ces201314a.html Link to full text HTML (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:pal:compes:v:55:y:2013:i:2:p:201-231

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/41294/PS2

Access Statistics for this article

Comparative Economic Studies is currently edited by Nauro Campos

More articles in Comparative Economic Studies from Palgrave Macmillan, Association for Comparative Economic Studies Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().