"This is social science at its best. David Stasavage offers an original thesis, develops it carefully, and supports it with historical and quantitative evidence. A tour de force."--Daron Acemoglu, Massachusetts Institute of Technology"The fundamental idea of this interesting book is well-defined and convincing--size mattered in the construction and implementation of political institutions that represented debt-holder interests. The book combines game theory and case studies with a novel use of comparative analyses to test the main hypotheses. It leaves readers with a provocative suggestion: the road to stable sovereign finances was not paved by republican city states per se, but by their entrenched town oligarchies."--Regina Grafe, Northwestern University""States of Credit" evaluates a novel conjecture regarding the relations between political representation and public debt. It is an important contribution to the literature."--Avner Greif, Stanford University

Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xi CHAPTER ONE: Introduction 1 Representation, Scale, and Control 6 The Evolution and Importance of Public Credit 9 Representative Assemblies in City-States and Territorial States 11 Geographic Scale and Merchant Power 14 Broad Sample Evidence 16 Origins of City-States 18 Case Study Evidence 20 Plan of the Book 24 CHAPTER TWO: The Evolution and Importance of Public Credit 25 Why Credit Was Important 25 When Did States First Borrow Long-Term? 29 The Cost of Borrowing 38 Economic Explanations for the City-State Advantage 43 Summary 46 CHAPTER THREE: Representative Assemblies in Europe, 1250-1750 47 Origins of Representative Assemblies 48 Prerogatives of Representative Assemblies 54 Who Was Represented? 61 The Intensity of Representation 65 Summary 68 CHAPTER FOUR: Assessing the City-State Advantage 70 Representation and Credit as an Equilibrium 72 Representative Institutions and the Creation of a Public Debt 77 Representative Institutions and the Cost of Borrowing 84 Variation within City-States 90 Summary 93 CHAPTER FIVE: Origins of City-States 94 The Rokkan/Tilly Hypothesis 95 The Carolingian Partition Hypothesis 95 Empirical Evidence 100 Reassessing the City-State Advantage 106 Summary 107 CHAPTER SIX: Three City-State Experiences 110 Merchant Oligarchy in Cologne 111 Genoa and the Casa di San Giorgio 117 Siena under the Rule of the Nine 125 Summary 131 CHAPTER SEVEN: Three Territorial State Experiences 132 France and the Rentes sur l'Hotel de Ville 132 Revisiting Absolutism in Castile 142 Accounting for Holland's Financial Revolution 150 Summary 154 CHAPTER EIGHT: Implications for State Formation and Development 156 The Debate on War and State Formation 156 Information, Commitment, and Democracy 158 Understanding Early Modern Growth 161 Bibliography 167 Index 187