Nonmarket Institutions, Coercive Power, and Economic Efficiency

这项研究的目的是扩展一种非市场经济机构的性质、影响和衰落的比较实证和理论研究，这种机构支持以时间和地点距离为特征的匿名商品市场，例如信贷市场和未来交付的合同。这项研究由两个独立但相关的项目组成。第一部分是对中世纪晚期商业革命期间政治制度、强制权和商业发展之间关系的实证和理论考察。具体地说，这些关系将在中世纪晚期热那亚的背景下进行审查，热那亚是那个时期意大利第二大海上城邦。将分析潜在的军事力量使用在多大程度上阻碍了建立热那亚公社的封建领主的合作能力。此外，将审查政治机构在多大程度上阻碍或促进这种合作。第二个项目将研究社会群体(如氏族、部落和族裔群体)将经济资源投资于军事力量并利用这种能力从其他群体掠夺财富的能力所产生的经济影响。在这方面，将探讨在什么条件下，有能力提前征税和要求征税的国家能够促进经济福利，以及在什么条件下，经济福利不会因为没有具有这种属性的国家而受到阻碍。这一分析将结合两种主流的国家观点。也就是说，国家反映了一种社会契约，国家作为具有有限强制权力的独裁者。博弈论框架将允许对自我实施的契约关系进行显式建模。预计这一分析将为今后对前现代欧洲和当代非洲经济体的国家性质和经济经验进行实证研究奠定基础。

The purpose of this research is to extend a comparative empirical and theoretical study of the nature, implications, and decline of a non-market economic institutions that supported anonymous markets for goods characterized by distance in time and place such as credit markets and contracts for future delivery. This research consists of two separate but related projects. The first is an empirical and theoretical examination of the relations between political institutions, coercive power, and commercial development during the late medieval Commercial Revolution. Specifically, these relations will be examined in the context of late medieval Genoa, the second largest maritime Italian city-state during that period. The extent to which the potential use of military power hindered the ability of feudal lords, who established the Commune of Genoa, to cooperate will be analyzed. Further, the extent to which political institutions hindered or fostered such cooperation will be examined. The second project will examine the economic implications of the ability of social groups (such as clans, tribe, and ethnic groups) to invest economic resources in military strength and use this ability to expropriate wealth from other groups. In this context, the conditions will be explored under which a state with the ability to predate and demand taxes can promote economic welfare, and the conditions under which economic welfare is not hindered due to the absence of a state with such attributes. This analysis will combine the two prevailing views of the state. Namely, the state as reflecting a social contract and the state as dictator with limited coercive power. A game theoretical framework will allow the explicit modeling of self-enforcing contractual relations. It is expected that this analysis will provide the foundation for future empirical research into the nature of the state and the economic experience of economies in pre-modern Europe and contemporary Africa.