Banking Before Banks: Networks, Behaviour and Strategies in Early Financial Markets

This interdisciplinary project analyses the economic strategies and behaviour of men and women in early financial networks (1400-1900) through social network analysis. The objectives are twofold, (1) to understand how early financial networks formed and (2) how people behaved in such networks. This project focuses on three critical research questions for investigation:

1-     How did early financial networks form?

2-     What were the strategies and behaviour of men and women in early financial markets and networks?

3-     How did social networks affect economic behaviour?

This project breaks new ground in adopting a comparative approach through the use of Social Network Analysis (SNA hereafter). The project features various European regions through selected case studies: France, Italy, Finland and Sweden. The focus is on the period 1400-1900, a key moment of change that featured industrialization and the development of a commercial banking system. An analysis that uses both SNA and historical empirical analysis is applied to various datasets of probate inventories and tax records.

This project is funded by the Marcus and Amalia Wallenberg Foundation (2020-2022). 

Related Event: Workshop Networks, Behaviour and Strategies in Early Financial Markets, Stockholm University, October 2022

Related Publications:

Dermineur E., “The Evolution of Credit in pre-Industrial Finland”, Scandinavian Economic History Review, 70:1, 2022, pp 57-86.

Dermineur E., “Peer to Peer Credit Networks in Sweden, 1810-1910” in J. Levy and C. Van Bochove, Beyond Banks: A Comparative Framework for Understanding Credit Markets and Intermediation, Palgrave, 2024, forthcoming.

Dermineur E. & Pompermaier M., 2022. “Credit Networks in Renaissance Florence: Revisiting the Catasto of 1427. A Research Project in the Making”, RiSES - Ricerche di storia economica e sociale, 1-2, pp147-175

M. Pompermaier, “Lending and borrowing in Renaissance Florence (1427-1430). Dynamic credit networks?”, forthcoming (Il Mulino, 2023).

Dermineur E., “The Credit Networks of the Rural Poor: A Comparative Overview”, forthcoming.

Dermineur E., “Networks of Solidarity in Modern Sweden: The Persistence of Peer-to-Peer Lending in the Twentieth Century”, forthcoming

Pompermaier M., “Credit Networks in Renaissance Florence. The Moneychangers as Lenders, Borrowers, and Intermediaries”, forthcoming

Dermineur E. and Pompermaier M. (eds)2024. Credit Networks in the Preindustrial World. A Social Analysis Perspective. Palgrave, in press