TY - JOUR
T1 - The institutional dynamics of early modern Eurasian trade
T2 - The commenda and the corporation
AU - Harris, Ron
N1 - Funding Information:
I would like to thank Timur Kuran for encouraging me to write this article and for valuable suggestions thought the project. I would also like to thank Murat Çizakça, Mark Cohen, Mordechai Akiva Friedman, Jessica Goldberg, Pierre-Cyrille Hautcoeur, Dan Klerman, Roy Kreitner, Naomi Lamoreaux, Ghislaine Lydon, Adam McKeown, Gilles Postel-Vinay, Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, Elimelech Westreich, Madeleine Zelin, two anonymous referees and participants in ASLH 2006 Annual Meeting, The Economic Performance of Civilizations: Roles of Culture, Religion, and the Law conference at USC, EHESS Paris economic history seminar, Tel Aviv University Law School faculty seminar and Bar Ilan University Law School faculty seminar. I thank the Templeton Foundation and Metanexus Institute for financial support provided through Institute for Economic Research on Civilizations at USC and the Cegla Center at Tel Aviv Law for its financial support. I would like to thank Jonathan Bensoussan, Olga Frieshman, Amit Itai, Avshlom Kasher and Andrey Yagupolsky for the exceptional assistance in research.
PY - 2009/9
Y1 - 2009/9
N2 - The focus of this article is on legal-economic institutions that organized early-modern Eurasian trade. It identifies two such institutions that had divergent dispersion patterns, the corporation and the commenda. The corporation ended up as a uniquely European institution that did not migrate until the era of European colonization. The commenda that originated in Arabia migrated all the way to Western Europe and to China. The article explains their divergent dispersion based on differences in their institutional and geographical environments and on dynamic factors, claiming that institutional analysis errs when it ignores migration of institutions and providing building blocks for the modeling of institutional migration.
AB - The focus of this article is on legal-economic institutions that organized early-modern Eurasian trade. It identifies two such institutions that had divergent dispersion patterns, the corporation and the commenda. The corporation ended up as a uniquely European institution that did not migrate until the era of European colonization. The commenda that originated in Arabia migrated all the way to Western Europe and to China. The article explains their divergent dispersion based on differences in their institutional and geographical environments and on dynamic factors, claiming that institutional analysis errs when it ignores migration of institutions and providing building blocks for the modeling of institutional migration.
KW - Business organization
KW - China
KW - Comparative institutional analysis
KW - Europe
KW - India
KW - Institutional transplants
KW - Middle East
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=69249156835&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.jebo.2009.04.016
DO - 10.1016/j.jebo.2009.04.016
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AN - SCOPUS:69249156835
SN - 0167-2681
VL - 71
SP - 606
EP - 622
JO - Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization
JF - Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization
IS - 3
ER -