By analysing a newly compiled database of exchange rates, this paper finds that Central European financial integration advanced in a cyclical fashion over the fifteenth century. The cycles were associated with changes in the money supply. Long-distance financial integration progressed in...

Starting out from the proposition that the feudal political system functioned as a market for military security where no territorial monopolies and consequently no states in the modern sense of the word existed, state formation is here explained as the outcome of efforts to restrict competition...