Institutions and Impersonal Exchange: From Communal to Individual Responsibility

This paper utilizes historical evidence and game theory to examine institutions that fostered intercommunity impersonal exchange during the late medieval period. It presents the community responsibility system that functioned throughout Europe and supported impersonal exchange despite the lack of impartial legal enforcement provided by a third party. At its center was the use of intracommunity contract enforcement institutions to provide the enforcement required for intercommunity impersonal exchange. A transition toward individual legal responsibility during the late thirteenth century reflects the system's contributions to its own decline. The processes that it fostered reduced its economic efficiency and (intracommunity) political viability.