Calendrier du 01 décembre 2020
Virtual Development Economics Seminar
Du 01/12/2020 de 17:00 à 18:15
VOENA Alessandra (Stanford University)
Maternal Mortality Risk and Spousal Differences in Desired Fertility
écrit avec N. Ashraf, E. Field et R Zimparo
PSI-PSE (Petit Séminaire Informel de la Paris School of Economics) Seminar
Du 01/12/2020 de 17:00 à 18:00
Zoom: https://zoom.us/j/97117933045?pwd=VG5oY0RDaWJMbmtSY2o3Y2F5RkZxZz09
ASSEM Hoda (PSE)
Trade and Voting in the UN Security Council: Evidence from the Cold War
écrit avec Anne-Celia Disdier and Pamina Koenig
Applied Economics Lunch Seminar
Du 01/12/2020 de 12:30 à 13:30
via ZOOM
RASTER Tom ()
The Hanseatic League versus its competitors: Evidence from millions of shipments
Long-distance trade has emerged and expanded throughout history despite abundant obstacles. How trade regimes, such as merchant guilds, were able to operate under such circumstances has attracted attention from scholars of institutions and market imperfections. However, whether merchant guilds were conducive to overall growth or only benefited a few members of society remains disputed; as is their use of formal versus informal rules in their internal functioning (e.g. Greif, 1989; Ogilvie, 2011).
To the best of my knowledge, this paper is the first to quantitatively study how the trade of a merchant guild compares to that of their competitors who do not belong to any guild. I focus on the Hanseatic League (1100s-1669), a trade confederation of, at its peak, almost 200 towns in the German Lands and surrounding areas. Newly collected archival data reveals the extent and timing of each town’s participation in the League’s meetings. I combine this information with expansive, novel data of nearly all maritime trade (1.5 million shipments) between the Baltic and North Sea areas from 1497 to 1700. During this crucial period in history, institutions of the First Commercial Revolution gave way to those of the Second, which oversaw the beginning of Atlantic trade.
In the empirical analysis, I exploit features of the trade data to distinguish, for each shipment, whether the trade was conducted by the Hanseatic League, more independent Dutch traders, or by another trading regime. I then compare trade across these regimes along various dimensions, such as trade value, prices (volatility), and type of goods (including new luxuries). In doing so, I test various hypotheses raised in the literature, including the relationship between trade regimes and growth. Preliminary findings suggest marked differences across trade regimes and contribute to our understanding of trade institutions, historical and contemporary, that operate in environments where coordination is difficult.