Einleitung

This Special Issue brings together four contributions on premodern capital markets: Baum’s response to Signori’s critique of Sprandel’s late-era research project in the 1960s also offers an overview of the historiography of annuity research. The original project involved analysis of a large dataset and this approach was continued here, resulting in the publication of an unparalleled dataset with over 35,000 interest rates for over 100 annuity markets from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century. The article also includes an introduction to the use of the data. Two research articles complete this Special Issue: One is a case study on the external capital relations of Brunswick (Braunschweig) between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries; the other focuses on the institutional framework for public debt, namely contract enforcement in Dordrecht around 1300. The contributions further ongoing debates on public debt, market integration and the mobility of capital, generating new impulses not only within what is a well-established research field in medieval studies but also in more quantitatively inclined economic history

Computer Science · German Literature and Culture Studies · Public Administration and Political Analysis