EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Debt policy under constraints: Philip II, the Cortes, and Genoese bankers

Carlos Álvarez-Nogal () and Christophe Chamley ()
Additional contact information
Christophe Chamley: PSE - Paris-Jourdan Sciences Economiques - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, PSE - Paris School of Economics - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, Department of Economics - BU - Boston University [Boston]

PSE-Ecole d'économie de Paris (Postprint) from HAL

Abstract: Under Philip II, Castile was the first country with a large nation-wide domestic public debt. A new view of that fiscal system is presented that is potentially relevant for other fiscal systems in Europe before 1800. The credibility of the debt, mostly in perpetual redeemable annuities, was enhanced by decentralized funding through taxes administered by cities making up the Realm in the Cortes. The accumulation of short-term debt depended on refinancing through long-term debt. Financial crises in the short-term debt occurred when the service of the long-term debt reached the revenues of its servicing taxes. They were not caused by liquidity crises and were resolved after protracted negotiations in the Cortes by tax increases and interest rate reductions.

Keywords: domestic; public; debt (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-02
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

Published in The Economic History Review, 2014, 67 (1), pp.192-213. ⟨10.1111/1468-0289.12010⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
Journal Article: Debt policy under constraints: Philip II, the Cortes, and Genoese bankers (2014) Downloads
Working Paper: Debt policy under constraints: Philip II, the Cortes, and Genoese bankers (2014)
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:pseptp:halshs-00941859

DOI: 10.1111/1468-0289.12010

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in PSE-Ecole d'économie de Paris (Postprint) from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Caroline Bauer ().

 
Page updated 2024-07-01
Handle: RePEc:hal:pseptp:halshs-00941859