Marketing Sovereign Promises: The English Model

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Stanford University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0507
• DOI: 10.1017/S0022050715000078
• 发表日期: 2015
• 页码: 190-218
• 关键词: POLITICAL-ECONOMY; PROPERTY-RIGHTS; debt; britain; england; credibility; FOUNDATIONS; GOVERNMENT; COMMITMENT; taxation

摘要

The difficulty sovereign actors face in making their promises credible is widely appreciated (e.g., North and Weingast 1989; Myerson 2008). In this article, I argue that the English repeatedly used institutions of monopoly brokerage to mediate trades between the sovereign (offering various promises) and subjects (offering revenues). Once set up-at different times in different market-sinstitutions of monopoly brokerage sparked substantial and abrupt growth in state revenues. Moreover, these revenue increases cannot be explained by changes in promise-holders' ability to punish nonperformance, changes in the preferences of pivotal state decision makers, or changes in high constitutional structure alone.