Institutions that allow for the accumulation of capital were as crucial to economic growth throughout history as they are today. But whereas historians often focus on the precursors of modern banking institutions, little is known of any alternatives that may have served similar purposes prior to their rise. This study focuses on the institutional framework of markets for 'renten', a type of long-t

The cost of retirement has a strong impact on social processes, both today and in the past. This study concerns the cost of retirement to St. Hiëronymusdal, a retirement home that was established outside the town of Leiden in the first half of the sixteenth century. Here individuals could purchase lifelong accommodation and care. If they had enough money to spend, they could opt for relatively lux

This paper provides an analysis of 67 corrody contracts from 1476-1538. By purchasing such a contract, the elderly acquired lifelong lodging and care in an institution - in this case the hospital of Sint-Pieter in Amsterdam. Most customers paid in kind, by handing over real estate and financial instruments to the hospital, or promising to do manual labour. Customers spent the equivalent of 250-400

Mortgage markets in developing economies, both past and present, are often confined to social networks between private individuals. The inadequate registration of ownership of and encumbrances on borrowers' real estate has been offered as a reason for this, but it is questionable whether such registration provides either a simple or a complete explanation. This paper analyses mortgage markets betw

Rural law courts are sometimes believed to have contributed to juridical fragmentation, which led to coordination failures and, hence, to high transaction costs. We present a case study of the village law court of Mijnsheerenland, and pay particular attention to the question of whether non-residents expected villagers to have a 'home court' advantage. Our analysis of default risk premiums demanded

How, in historical societies, did people finalise transactions? Over the past few decades many economic and social historians have concerned themselves with this question, following the examples set by Douglass North and Craig Muldrew. Surprisingly, they have almost completely disregarded the most straightforward solution that historical societies had to offer, namely by using coins and currencies

In the past decades, numeracy has taken an increasingly important place in the study of human capital formation, as well as in literacy studies and studies on formal education and book production. In order to understand levels of education, scholars have recently tried to develop new ways to measure the level of education, particularly because it has since become apparent that the measures of lite

Our article aims to detect differences in behaviour towards the capital and land market of households of different sizes and levels of income. Participation in markets for real estate, capital, and ships was considerable, not only among middling and elite groups but also among the poor. Large households were most active in markets, incurring significantly greater debt. Poor households with a low s

In the past one of the main challenges to households was that of coping with adversity. War, plague, famine, and flood were a constant threat, and could reduce what little improvements families had made in productivity. Economic growth therefore required a means of absorbing external adversities. To see how well late medieval households coped with adversity, this investigation focuses on the house

Although the importance of New Institutional Economics and the institutional approach for understanding pre-industrial economic development and the early growth of markets are widely accepted, it has proven to be difficult to assess more directly the effects of institutions on the functioning of markets. This paper uses empirical research on the rise of markets in late medieval Holland to illumina

In this paper, we analyse the functioning of private capital markets in Holland in the late medieval period. We argue that in the absence of banks and state agencies involved in the supply of credit, entrepreneurs' access to credit was determined by two interrelated factors. The first was the quality of property rights protection and the extent to which properties could be used as collateral. The

In the second half of the fifteenth century the largest towns in the county of Holland created substantial public debts. This article puts forward the hypothesis that towns speculated on sovereign monetary policy in the process. They exposed themselves and their creditors to fluctuations in the exchange rates between silver and gold coins, which initially caused the reduction of their real 'intere