In the period from the 9th to the 12th century, Germany witnessed essential steps from a backward agrarian society towards a considerable degree of specialization and trade. The two main institutional innovations of this development were the rise of market places (until the 11th century) and...

In this paper the transaction cost approach of Oliver E. Williamson is applied to the long-run evolution of the provision of physical assets to the organized securities markets of London and New York. Although this evolution is shown to be in general compliance with the predictions of the...