The theory of money that emerged from the Keynesian Revolution is coming increasingly into question, and a variety of new theories are being put forward as alternatives. The most promising is one I will call the finance constraint theory. This paper is a progress report on its development. It is...

This paper examine the sources and uses of finance in the preindustrial economy. It explore the motives of individual savers and the choice of assets available to them. It then discusses the effects of the prohibition of usury on the availability of finance and on its form. It concludes with a...

The development of pre-industrial Europe was driven by the expansion of trade. This paper describes the patterns of trade and shows how they can be understood in terms of differences in trading costs. It discusses how the different levels of trade?from local to transoceanic-contributed, both...

In pre-industrial Europe, growth was driven by the expansion of trade, and the expansion of trade was driven by falling trading costs. This paper discusses the mechanisms linking these processes: profit-seeking behavior by merchants, changes in the organization of production, technological...

In pre-industrial Europe, rising productivity both in agriculture and in industry depended on the expansion of trade, and the expansion of trade depended in turn on the reduction of trading costs. An important component of trading costs--for some goods the most important--was the cost of...

This paper describes the industrial development of Europe to 1600. The conventional history of industrial development sees technological progress as its primary cause. However, this paper argues that the source of rising productivity was not new technology but the reorganization of production in...

The expansion of trade in pre-industrial Europe led to a transformation of agriculture. It induced specialization to exploit comparative advantage as well as a restructuring of the process of production, with manorial agriculture giving way to an agriculture of family farms. Technological...

In pre-industrial Europe, many of the functions performed today by large corporations and governments were performed by merchant associations of various types - merchant guilds, regulated companies, merchant-controlled cities, and merchant colonies. Merchant association provided their members...