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A Tale of “Benevolent” Governments: Private Credit Markets, Public Finance, and the Role of Jewish Lenders in Medieval and Renaissance Italy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 July 2012

Maristella Botticini
Maristella Botticini
Affiliation:
Maristella Botticini is Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, Boston University, 270 BayState Road, Boston, MA 02215. E-mail: maristel@bu.eda
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Extract

This article illustrates the impact of Jewish lenders on private credit markets and public finance in medieval and Renaissance Italian towns. In Tuscan private credit markets, Jewish lending helped households to smooth consumption, buy working capital, and provide dowries for daughters. Jewish lenders also helped the public fmances of the communes in which they resided. This article shows that public-finance considerations affected the choice of the interest-rate ceiling Jews were allowed to charge. In many instances, the communes raised the interest-rate ceiling for Jewish lenders in order to tax or borrow the proceeds.

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The Journal of Economic History , Volume 60 , Issue 1 , March 2000 , pp. 164 - 189
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Copyright © The Economic History Association 2000

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