The Simplest Model of Global Governance Ever Seen? The London Corn Market (1885–1914)

Jérôme Sgard (jerome.sgard@sciencespo.fr)
Additional contact information
Jérôme Sgard: CERI - Centre de recherches internationales (Sciences Po, CNRS) - Sciences Po - Sciences Po - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: From the 1880s till 1930, the global grain trade was regulated primarily by the London Corn Trade Association, a private body entirely controlled by core market insiders. It had three defining contributions: it produced grain standards, which transformed cereals into commodities; it arbitrated disputes between traders; and it drafted some sixty standard contracts that were minutely adjusted to both the trading rules in exporting countries and to standard contracts for shipping, insurance, and trade credit. These transnational contractual vehicles drastically simplified the successive operations of international trade along the whole value chain. Critically, while the contracts were governed by English law and protected by the London courts, they entirely avoided any relations with other national legal orders or jurisdictions. Conflicts of laws, a perennial source of transaction costs in a global economy, were by and large eschewed by means of a private market order that was both local and global.

Keywords: commodity market; produce standardization; arbitration; standard contracts; English law; first global era; private market ordering (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-07-02
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://sciencespo.hal.science/hal-04081565
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published in Eric Brousseau, Jean-Michel Glachant, Jérôme Sgard (eds). The Oxford Handbook of Institutions of International Economic Governance and Market Regulation, Oxford University Press, 2019, 9780190900571. ⟨10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190900571.013.29⟩

Downloads: (external link)
https://sciencespo.hal.science/hal-04081565/document (application/pdf)

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:hal:journl:hal-04081565

DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190900571.013.29

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD (hal@ccsd.cnrs.fr).