Interregional flows of long-term mortgage credit in eighteenth-century Spain. To what extent was the market fragmented?

Cyril Milhaud (1, 2)

1 PSE - Paris School of Economics
2 EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales

Recently, new research has challenged the traditional narrative: Spain did not suffer from a ruler that threatened his subjects' property with excessive taxes and forced loans. Instead, Spanish economic development was held back by a decentralized and non-predatory governance, unable to solve the coordination problems in the way of more integrated markets. Through the analysis of the governance and loan portfolios of an ecclesiastical order, this paper examines to which extent mortgage credit markets were fragmented in early modern Spain. This order not only collected resources that it subsequently lent, but pooled them. Indeed, it developed into a nationally integrated organization able to offer everything from small loans to farmers to substantial amounts to the king and the Madrid elite.

Mots clés: Long-Term Credit; Market integration; Spain; Early Modern

Domaines: Economies et finances; Histoire

Cyril Milhaud. Interregional flows of long-term mortgage credit in eighteenth-century Spain. To what extent was the market fragmented? . 2018. ⟨hal-01180682v3⟩