I analyze the basis of the market economy in classical Rome, from the perspective of personal-versus-impersonal exchange and focusing on the role of the state in providing market-enabling institutions. I start by reviewing the central conflict in all exchanges between those holding and those...

During the hundred-year period from about 1320 to about 1420, the Florentine woollen cloth industry underwent two closely connected crises. The first crisis was the consequence, direct and indirect, of the ravages of warfare and falling population, afflicting the entire Mediterranean basin and...

This (revised) study seeks to examine the rise, expansion, and ultimate decline of the Italian wool-based textile industries over a period of six centuries (from ca. 1100 to ca. 1730). An international trade model combining transaction costs and comparative advantage is employed to explain the...

Adopting a simplistic view of Coase (1960), most economic analyses of property rights disregard both the key advantage that legal property rights (that is, in rem rights) provide to rightholders in terms of enhanced enforcement, and the difficulties they pose to acquirers in terms of information...

In this paper, we design the optimal contract when two agents can collude under asymmetric information. They have correlated types, produce complementary inputs and are protected by limited liability. Therefore, a joint manipulation of reports allows them to internalize informational and...

The traditional theory of monopolistic screening tackles individual self-selection but does not address the possibility that buyers could form a coalition to coordinate their purchases and to reallocate the goods. In this paper, we design the optimal sale mechanism which takes into account both...

This paper seeks to explain why Spanish merino wools arrived so late in the Low Countries, only from the 1420s, why initially only those cloth producers known as the nouvelles draperies chose to use them, and why their resort to such merino wools allowed at least some of them to escape the...

This paper, a much revised version of an earlier paper (with different tables), seeks to explain why Spanish merino wools arrived so late in the Low Countries, only from the 1420s, why initially only those cloth producers known as the nouvelles draperies chose to use them, and why their resort...

The paper explores an efficiency hypothesis regarding the contractual process between large retailers, such as Wal-Mart and Carrefour, and their suppliers. The empirical evidence presented supports the idea that large retailers play a quasi-judicial role, acting as "courts of first instance" in...

Demand for law professionals in the conveyancing of property is decreasing because of market and institutional changes. On the market side, many transactions feature large, well-known parties and standardized transactions, which make professionals less effective or necessary for protecting the...