Questioning Credible Commitment

Perspectives on the Rise of Financial Capitalism

D'Maris Coffman, Adrian Leonard, Larry Neal

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781107039018
• eBook ISBN: 9781107440142
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Macroeconomics
• Index: Economics

Financial capitalism emerged in a recognisably modern form in late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Great Britain. Following the seminal work of Douglass C. North and Barry R. Weingast (1989), many scholars have concluded that the 'credible commitment' that was provided by parliamentary backing of government as a result of the Glorious Revolution of 1688 provided the key institutional underpinning on which modern public finances depend. In this book, a specially commissioned group of historians and economists examine and challenge the North and Weingast thesis to show that multiple commitment mechanisms were necessary to convince public creditors that sovereign debt constituted a relatively accessible, safe and liquid investment vehicle. Questioning Credible Commitment provides academics and practitioners with a broader understanding of the origins of financial capitalism, and, with its focus on theoretical and policy frameworks, shows the significance of the debate to current macroeconomic policy making.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Figures
• Tables
• Contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Could the crown credibly commit to respect its charters? England, 1558-1640
• 3 Contingent commitment: The development of English marine insurance in the context of New Institutional Economics, 1577-1720
• 4 Credibility, transparency, accountability, and the public credit under the Long Parliament and Commonwealth, 1643-1653
• 5 Jurisdictional controversy and the credibility of common law
• 6 The importance of not defaulting: The significance of the election of 1710
• 7 Financing and refinancing the War of the Spanish Succession, and then refinancing the South Sea Company
• 8 Sovereign debts, political structure, and institutional commitments in Italy, 1350-1700
• 9 Bounded leviathan: Fiscal constraints and financial development in the Early Modern Hispanic world
• 10 Court capitalism, illicit markets, and political legitimacy in eighteenth-century France: The salt and tobacco monopolies
• 11 Institutions, deficits, and wars: The determinants of British government borrowing costs from the end of the seventeenth century to 1850
• Index