What Lessons for Economic Development Can We Draw from the Champagne Fairs?

CESifo Working Paper No. 3438

What Lessons for Economic Development
Can We Draw from the Champagne Fairs?

Abstract

The medieval Champagne fairs are widely used to draw lessons about the institutional basis
for long-distance impersonal exchange. This paper re-examines the causes of the outstanding
success of the Champagne fairs in mediating international trade, the timing and causes of the
fairs’ decline, and the institutions for securing property rights and enforcing contracts at the
fairs. It finds that contract enforcement at the fairs did not take the form of private-order or
corporative mechanisms, but was provided by public institutions. More generally, the success
and decline of the Champagne fairs depended crucially on the policies adopted by the public
authorities.

JEL-Code: N430, N730, O170.

Keywords: legal system, medieval Europe, trade, private-order institutions, community
responsibility system.

April 2011

We thank Mathieu Arnoux, André Carus, Tracy Dennison, Tim Guinnane, John Henderson,
Sara Horrell, Paola Lanaro, Gary Libecap, Erik Lindberg, Abhay Pethe, Tom Scott, James
Thomson, Francesca Trivellato, Allan Tulchin, Pat Story, Hillay Zmora, and participants at
the Cambridge Core Economic History Seminar and the 2011 Economic History Society
Conference, for their helpful advice and stimulating comments.

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