Retail Ratios in the Netherlands, c. 1670 - c. 1815

Sheilagh Ogilvie

No 2, Working Papers from Department of Economic and Social History at the University of Cambridge

Abstract: The Netherlands are thought to have pioneered an early modern 'Retail Revolution' which reduced the transaction costs of bringing market wares to wider social strata, facilitating the Consumer Revolution. This paper addresses open questions about this development using a commonly used quantitative benchmark – the 'retail ratio', defined as the number of retailers per 1,000 inhabitants. We present a large dataset of Dutch retail ratios and use them to show how the density of retailing in the Netherlands varied across space, over time, and with other local characteristics. We conclude by drawing broader implications of our findings for understanding the early modern Retail Revolution.

Keywords: Retail Consumer revolution; Netherlands; Women; Guilds; Agglomeration economies; Agrarian structure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L81 N33 N43 N73 N93 R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 21,388 words text + tables and figures
Date: 2012-01-01, Revised 2012-01-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in Van den Heuvel, D. and S. Ogilvie (2013). 'Retail development in the consumer revolution: The Netherlands, c. 1670–c. 1815'. Explorations in Economic History 50(1): 69-87.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.econsoc.hist.cam.ac.uk/docs/CWPESH%20number%202%20March%202012.pdf None. (application/pdf)
None.

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:cmh:wpaper:02

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Department of Economic and Social History at the University of Cambridge Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Guillaume Proffit () and Alexis Litvine ().