TY - JOUR
T1 - Institutional investors in the Portuguese credit market (1550-1800)
T2 - The case of the Misericórdias
AU - Rodrigues, Lisbeth
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank Leonor Freire Costa, Jaime Reis, Isabel dos Guimarães Sá, Susana Münch Miranda, Bruno Lopes, Graça Almeida Borges, Regina Grafe, Íñigo Ena Sanjuán, Pedro Neves, Nuno Palma, António Castro Henriques and the anonymous referees for their helpful comments and suggestions. This article benefitted from the comments received at the «Financial Institutions in Early Modern Iberian Monarchies» Workshop at the EUI (2021), «The Shadow of the Sovereign—Public and Private Credit Markets in Early Modern Europe» Seminar at ISEG (2021), and the 2019 Portuguese Association of Economic and Social History Conference in Faro, where preliminary versions were presented. The author gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia under the research project PTDC/HAR-HIS/28809/2017 and UIDB/04521/2020. 1
Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Instituto Figuerola de Historia y Ciencias Sociales, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.
PY - 2024
Y1 - 2024
N2 - This article questions the drivers behind the distribution of savings in different capital markets in Portugal between 1550 and 1800. A novel dataset of credit transactions, interest rates and debt service documents a shift in the lenders' investment behaviour. By 1712, one of the leading institutional creditors-the Misericórdias-had ceased to allocate funds to the sovereign debt market. Data reveal that this disinvestment was neither related to the poor performance of debt service nor to the lure of potentially higher returns on private credit. We argue that changes in the rationales for issuing debt justify the drop in the number of institutional investors in the public credit market, and this correlates with the heavy allocation of funds into private lending.
AB - This article questions the drivers behind the distribution of savings in different capital markets in Portugal between 1550 and 1800. A novel dataset of credit transactions, interest rates and debt service documents a shift in the lenders' investment behaviour. By 1712, one of the leading institutional creditors-the Misericórdias-had ceased to allocate funds to the sovereign debt market. Data reveal that this disinvestment was neither related to the poor performance of debt service nor to the lure of potentially higher returns on private credit. We argue that changes in the rationales for issuing debt justify the drop in the number of institutional investors in the public credit market, and this correlates with the heavy allocation of funds into private lending.
KW - financial repression
KW - institutional investors
KW - investment decisions
KW - private loans
KW - sovereign debt
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85183493321&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1017/S0212610923000137
DO - 10.1017/S0212610923000137
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85183493321
SN - 0212-6109
VL - 42
SP - 91
EP - 119
JO - Revista de Historia Economica - Journal of Iberian and Latin American Economic History
JF - Revista de Historia Economica - Journal of Iberian and Latin American Economic History
IS - 1
ER -