Marketing Sovereign Promises: The English Model
研究了英国如何通过垄断中介机构来促进主权者与臣民之间的交易，从而显著且突然地增加国家收入，并排除了其他解释。
The difficulty sovereign actors face in making their promises credible is widely appreciated (e.g., North and Weingast 1989; Myerson 2008). In this article, I argue that the English repeatedly used institutions of monopoly brokerage to mediate trades between the sovereign (offering various promises) and subjects (offering revenues). Once set up—at different times in different markets—institutions of monopoly brokerage sparked substantial and abrupt growth in state revenues. Moreover, these revenue increases cannot be explained by changes in promise-holders’ ability to punish nonperformance, changes in the preferences of pivotal state decision makers, or changes in high constitutional structure alone.