Nonmarket Institutions, Coercive Power, and Economic Efficiency

本研究的目的是扩展一个比较实证和理论研究的性质，影响和下降的非市场经济制度，支持匿名市场的特点是在时间和地点的距离，如信贷市场和合同的未来交付。 这项研究包括两个独立但相关的项目。 第一部分是对中世纪晚期商业革命期间政治制度、强制力和商业发展之间关系的实证和理论考察。 具体而言，这些关系将在中世纪晚期热那亚，在此期间的第二大海上意大利城邦的背景下进行检查。 军事力量的潜在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，将被分析。 此外，还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）将经济资源投入军事力量并利用这种能力从其他群体掠夺财富的能力的经济影响。 在这种情况下，将探讨的条件下，一个国家的能力，以predate和要求税收可以促进经济福利，并在何种条件下，经济福利不会受到阻碍，由于缺乏一个国家与这样的属性。 这种分析将联合收割机结合国家的两种流行观点。 也就是说，国家反映了社会契约，国家是具有有限强制力的独裁者。 一个博弈理论框架将允许自我执行的合同关系的明确建模。 预计这一分析将为未来对国家性质和前现代欧洲和当代非洲经济体的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.