Acknowledging the current renewal of perspectives to the history of public
funding, the conference combines historians’ and economists’ approaches
in a comparative and longue durée perspective. Major changes took place
during the six centuries under consideration: they occurred in the nature
and amount of public funding, through currency issuing, credit and
taxation
(including the selling of offices). Their intensity and enforcement, mainly
resulting from international competition and warfare, influenced states
building.
Debating between economists and historians will help evaluate the long-term
historical processes and formulate explanatory hypotheses about how
statistical, financial and tax information was elaborated, how decisions
were made, what technical solutions were implemented and which
macroeconomic
effects resulted. Putting aside categories such as success or failure,
precocity or backwardness, the conference intends to restitute the
rationales of decision-making in their context.
Between the Middle-Ages and the modern period, two models could be opposed:
that of the city-states and that of territorial kingdoms. The two types of
regimes quite differently funded their spendings. On the one hand, the
city-states requested or forced loans between the 13th and 16th century.
They thus accessed long-term low-interest credit, which securities were at
times considered as substitute for currency. On the other hand,
territorial states, in order to circumvent a strong political opposition
to taxation, used short-term loans which specialists, bankers or
financiers granted with high interest. From the beginning of modern era,
these political entities
organized a public loan system in order to supplement inelastic tax revenues.
They developed new instruments and institutions to consolidate short-term
debt. The historical rise of public debt between the 17th and 18th
centuries, the measure of its costs and its effects motivated a large
number of projects and estimations, which document credit innovation as
well as theories of the state, tax and money. For instance, public credit
– viewed in the Enlightenment as a problem of circulation and mobilization
of savings – became a founding debate of political economy.
On these grounds of state building and funding, the conference will analyse
how and why different solutions were adopted, and will evaluate the
contribution of the social, cultural, technological and economic factors –
among them, spatial dimension of the States, their political and demographic
structures, the unequal distribution of wealth, legal frameworks, moral
barriers – to change in state practices. The connection between the types
of political regimes and their capacity to have access to low-cost funding
has been much debated so far. Following recent works, which have stressed
the efficiency of financial institutions and the role of public debt bonds
transferability, alternative hypotheses will be explored. Especial attention
will be provided to analysis featuring market data to assess fundamental
microeconomic performance of debt securities: real return to (various
classes of) investors, transaction costs, cost for borrower, etc.
Speakers are invited to address three major issues, in a comparative purpose:
1. Tax vs. loan or tax and loan?
In political and macroeconomic perspectives, choices between financial
options (loan, tax increase, currency manipulation) resulted in social or
intergenerational distribution, which denotes implicit political conceptions
or moral values. How choices were made? How are selected fiscal instruments
and which type of wealth is taxed? How was the opening of investment to
foreigners justified, given these were remunerated by loan interest and
ultimately by taxation on subjects? What were the nature and efficiency of
restrictions placed on their access to public loans? Beyond the conflict of
tax versus loan funding, the development of medieval and modern states shows
tax potential to be the necessary condition of the borrowing power. The
development of both tax and loan could then be the sign of a new
institutional and philosophical setting between politics and economy.
2. Political regimes and public funding
Is there a link between political regime and financial efficiency? What
instruments set the strongest constraints in order to prevent risk of state
default? How was arranged the reputation of state credibility? How creditors
managed to monitor the borrowers? What result was achieved by monitoring? Is
there any systematic link between enforcement of property right (of
creditors), political regime and financial efficiency?
Microeconomic innovations should be analyzed: tax collecting and
administration, types of loan and debt evaluation; techniques of
deleveraging (currency debasement, pure default, amortization devices
mixing probabilistic calculus, positive knowledge or enforcement of public
commitments). Focused studies should keep in sight the general question:
what conditions warranted reform success or foster radical changes?
3. Primary and secondary markets for public debt securities
Public debt is a multi-storey building: before debt securities go public,
many changes in instruments and maturities occur in the obscure basement.
Bankers loans, asientos, traités, compromises, restructuring and eventually
consolidation into securities: at what cost and conditions do these
transformations of instruments and maturities occur?
Recent literature is mainly focused on secondary markets. The conference
will then offer the opportunity for a synthesis. Of particular
significance are three issues; - Transferability and liquidity of
securities: they crucially depended on both the collaterals and transfer
costs decided by legal authorities; - Heterogeneity of loans in terms of
interest rates and tax collateralization, which resulted in the need for
adequate information and increased transaction costs; - Role of brokers
which structured the secondary market, distributed information about
prices and connected sellers and buyers.
Program Committee
Françoise BAYARD (Comité pour l’histoire économique et financière de la
France)
Katia BÉGUIN (Paris 1, histoire moderne, EA 127)
Christian de BOISSIEU (Paris 1, économie, Comité pour l’histoire
économique et financière de la France)
Jean-Claude COLLIARD (science politique, président de l’Université Paris
1)
Angel GALAN (histoire médiévale, Universidad de Malaga)
Jean-Philippe GENET (Paris 1, histoire médiévale, LAMOP)
Miguel Angel LADERO QUESADA, Universidad Complutense, Madrid)
Stéphane LAMASSÉ (Paris 1, histoire médiévale, LAMOP)
Christine LEBEAU (Paris 1, histoire moderne, CRHM)
Dominique MARGAIRAZ (Paris 1, histoire moderne, IDHE)
Michael NORTH (Université de Greifswald, histoire moderne, membre du comité
directeur de la fondation Datini)
Pierre-Charles PRADIER (Paris 1, économie, histoire économique et
financière, SAMM)
David STASAVAGE (New York University, department of Politics)
Fausto PIOLA CASELLI (Université de Cassino, faculté d’économie)
Hans Peter ULLMANN (histoire moderne, Université de Cologne)
François R. VELDE (economist, Research Department Federal Reserve Bank of
Chicago) |
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