Private Lending in an Alpine Region during the Eighteenth Century: A Family of Merchant-Bankers and Their Credit Network

IF 0.7 2区 历史学 Q4 BUSINESS
Cinzia Lorandini, Francesca Odella
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

The literature on early modern credit markets emphasizes both the social embeddedness of credit relationships and the role of notaries. To enhance our understanding of how credit markets functioned in a “less-developed” economy, we investigate the local lending activities of a merchant-banker family that operated at the intersection of formal and informal credit. A combination of economic rationality and social motivations in lending decisions emerges. The credit network of this family firm provides a portrait of the social structure of the local community, where the central position of a few trusted notaries and members of the business and political elite highlights the prevalence of relationships of power and favor over impersonal market exchange. The predominance of informal credit reveals a preference for loans made outside of notarial circuits. Nonetheless, notaries were crucial in lending to borrowers of lower social status and with weak ties, thus helping the liquidity of these merchants to “trickle down” into local society.
18世纪阿尔卑斯山地区的私人借贷:商业银行家家族及其信贷网络
关于早期现代信贷市场的文献强调信用关系的社会嵌入性和公证人的作用。为了加深我们对信贷市场在“欠发达”经济体中如何运作的理解,我们调查了在正式和非正式信贷交叉点经营的商业银行家家族的当地贷款活动。贷款决策中出现了经济理性和社会动机的结合。这个家族企业的信用网络为当地社区的社会结构提供了一幅肖像,其中少数值得信赖的公证人和商业和政治精英成员的中心地位突出了权力关系和人情关系在非个人市场交换中的普遍存在。非正式信贷占主导地位表明,人们倾向于在公证渠道之外获得贷款。尽管如此,公证人在向社会地位较低、关系薄弱的借款人提供贷款方面发挥了至关重要的作用,从而帮助这些商人的流动性“渗透”到当地社会。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
1.20
自引率
30.00%
发文量
37
期刊介绍: Enterprise & Society offers a forum for research on the historical relations between businesses and their larger political, cultural, institutional, social, and economic contexts. The journal aims to be truly international in scope. Studies focused on individual firms and industries and grounded in a broad historical framework are welcome, as are innovative applications of economic or management theories to business and its context.
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