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\"Why do lenders time and again loan money to sovereign borrowers who promptly go bankrupt? When can this type of lending work? As the United States and many European nations struggle with mountains of debt, historical precedents can offer valuable insights. Lending to the Borrower from Hell looks at one famous case--the debts and defaults of Philip II of Spain. Ruling over one of the largest and most powerful empires in history, King Philip defaulted four times. Yet he never lost access to capital markets and could borrow again within a year or two of each default. Exploring the shrewd reasoning of the lenders who continued to offer money, Mauricio Drelichman and Hans-Joachim Voth analyze the lessons from this important historical example.Using detailed new evidence collected from sixteenth-century archives, Drelichman and Voth examine the incentives and returns of lenders. They provide powerful evidence that in the right situations, lenders not only survive despite defaults--they thrive. Drelichman and Voth also demonstrate that debt markets cope well, despite massive fluctuations in expenditure and revenue, when lending functions like insurance. The authors unearth unique sixteenth-century loan contracts that offered highly effective risk sharing between the king and his lenders, with payment obligations reduced in bad times.A fascinating story of finance and empire, Lending to the Borrower from Hell offers an intelligent model for keeping economies safe in times of sovereign debt crises and defaults\"-- Provided by publisher.

A finales del siglo XVI la corona se vio obligada a extraer mayores recursos de sus reinos. De esa forma en Nueva España, además de otras contribuciones, se introdujo la Bula de la Santa Cruzada, que consistía en un documento que ofrecía varias gracias y prerrogativas espirituales a cambio de una limosna. La predicación de la Bula entre los indios acrecentó el rendimiento de la empresa de Cruzada de manera muy significativa. Como consecuencia de ello, en este reino la renta de Cruzada constituyó el quinto ingreso más importante en esa época. Para llevar a cabo la administración de las limosnas, la corona recurrió a particulares que fueron nombrados tesoreros de Cruzada, lo que benefició tanto a ellos como a la monarquía. Towards the end of the 16th Century, the Spanish Crown found it necessary to extract more resources from its kingdoms. As a result, and on top of the colony’s other taxes, the Bull of the Holy Crusade was introduced in New Spain, which offered various graces and spiritual prerogatives in exchange for alms. The predication of the bull among the Indians greatly increased its profitability. As a consequence of this, in New Spain, the Crusade became the crown’s fifth-most-profitable source of income. To collect these alms, the crown turned to third parties who were named treasurers of the Crusade, which benefitted them personally as much as it did the monarchy.

Sovereign ownership of mines and taxation were fundamental principles governing the mining economy of the territories of the Castilian crown during the medieval period. Ownership of mines meant that mineral wealth, discovered or undiscovered, belonged to the crown estate. Only the sovereign could grant mining rights to ‘private’ persons and impose mineral taxation. Particularly during the last three centuries of the Reconquista (thirteenth to fifteenth centuries), these principles were used to unify the situation in those territories falling under the sway of a sovereign with expansionist ambitions. Increasing globalisation of the metal trade in the thirteenth century and the formation of capital markets in Europe firmly put the Castilian crown in competition with other economic agents aiming to win a monopoly in metallic wealth. Castile's mining laws aspired to solve the ensuing tension by attracting merchant capital to the mines, aiming to absorb the comparative advantages of mining capital. In a protracted process, the mineral laws of the sixteenth century were a testimony to the decisive influence of the sovereign in the history of mining. Sur les terres du roi de Castille, au Moyen Age, les mines appartenaient à la Couronne, autant que les impôts levés. Ces principes régissaient toute l'économie minière. Posséder les mines signifiait que l'Etat royal avait la richesse minière, quelle soit connue ou encore non découverte. Seul le souverain avait le pouvoir d'attribuer un privilège d'exploitation à des personnes „privées“ puis d'exiger le paiement d'impôts sur l'activité minière. Pendant les trois derniers siècles de la Reconquête (XIIIe-XVe siècles) ces principes servirent d'arguments unificateurs pour justifier la domination d'un souverain à l'expansionnisme ambitieux sur les territoires alors concernés. La globalisation croissante du commerce métallique au cours du XIIIe siècle, alliée, en Europe, à la formation de marchés capitalistes, plaça la Couronne de Castille en compétition avec des agents économiques susceptibles de prendre le monopole de richesses minières. Aboutissement d'un très long processus, la législation minière du XVIe siècle témoigne de l'influence décisive du souverain sur l'histoire minière. Der Bergbau in den Territorien der kastilischen Krone wurde im Mittelalter durch die grundlegenden Prinzipien der königlichen Vorrechte (Regalien) auf Bergbaubesitz und Besteuerung bestimmt. Nach dem Bergregal gehörten alle Erzvorkommen, ob bereits entdeckt oder nicht, zum Krongut. Nur der König konnte Schürf- und Abbaurechte an „Privatpersonen“ verleihen oder Steuern auf Erze und Mineralien erheben. Besonders in den drei letzten Jahrhunderten der Reconquista (13. bis 15. Jahrhundert) wurden diese Prinzipien dazu benutzt, um in den Territorien, die nun in den Einflussbereich eines expansionistisch ambitionierten Herrscherhauses gerieten, die innere Einheit voranzutreiben. Die zunehmende Globalisierung des Metallhandels im 13. Jahrhundert und die Herausbildung eines europäischen Kapitalmarktes brachten die kastilische Krone in scharfe Konkurrenz zu anderen Akteuren, die auf ein Monopol der Metallvorkommen aus waren. Die kastilischen Bergbaugesetze zielten darauf ab, die daraus erwachsenden Spannungen dadurch zu lösen, dass man Handelskapital in den Bergbau lockte, um so die komparativen Vorteile des Bergbaukapitals einzustreichen. Den Endpunkt dieses langwierigen Prozesses bildeten die Bergbaugesetze des 16. Jahrhunderts, die den entscheidenden Einfluss der Krone auf die Bergbaugeschichte bezeugen.

La crisis económica, política, financiera y social que estalló en 2008 ha traído consecuencias nefastas para los llamados estados del bienestar. El impacto social e ideológico que ha provocado esta \"crisis\" ha puesto en el punto de mira de los científicos sociales los problemas que han tenido que confrontar los estados para financiarse en los mercados privados y las soluciones planteadas al respecto. El presente artículo se interroga por la manera en la que la historiografía se ha aproximado a las \"crisis financieras\" de la Castilla de los siglos XVI y XVII durante la última década, las herramientas metodológicas que se han empleado y las perspectivas de análisis que han sido utilizadas. A lo largo de sus páginas se pretende ofrecer una suerte de estado de la cuestión que discurre por diferentes aspectos como la historia de las bancarrotas, la deuda y fiscalidad, y las finanzas.

The widespread ennoblement of the Spanish bourgeoisie in the Early Modern period has been traditionally considered one of the main causes of the “crisis of the seventeenth century.” Using a new time series of nobility cases I provide the first quantitative assessment of Castilian ennoblement. Contrary to established scholarship, I find that the tax exemptions cannot alone explain the flight to privilege. My data show that the central motivation behind ennoblement was to gain control of local governments. Although ennoblement reflected a high level of redistributive activity, there is no evidence linking it to economic stagnation in Spain.

This paper examines the structure and management of municipal finances in the Kingdom of Aragon in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in order to explain the substantial transformations that occurred over this period. In the sixteenth century the town councils were able to undertake significant projects to promote public power and develop local economies. However, their inability to raise revenues in line with expenditure in the second half of the sixteenth century caused an inexorable increase in debt. This financial weakness worsened in the seventeenth century until not even the constant recourse to credit was sufficient, bankrupting the councils. The situation was further exacerbated by the pressure of royal taxation in the second quarter of the seventeenth century, forcing the municipal authorities to seek additional sources of income. So straitened, councils found themselves obliged to sell common lands and raise municipal taxes to the detriment of consumer protection and public control over the market. Thus, the eventual bankruptcy of the Aragonese councils would yield control of municipal revenues and communal property to boards of creditors, chief among them being the Church. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

During his reign of the Hapsburg Empire in the second half of the 16th century, Philip II defaulted on imperial debt four times. Historians have ascribed the king's record as a serial defaulter to his autocratic power, which led to unconstrained expenditure patterns and to excessively naïve behavior by a succession of his creditors.