Colonial Institutions and Cross-Cultural Trade:RepartimientoCredit and Indigenous Production of Cochineal in Eighteenth-Century Oaxaca, Mexico
用新制度经济学重新审视西班牙殖民时期的分配制，发现其看似剥削的特征实为降低交易成本、促进跨文化贸易的制度安排。
Colonial societies exhibit peculiar institutions frequently attributed to the unequal and exploitative nature of the relations between colonizer and colonized. Repartimiento has been depicted as a coercive system of production and consumption designed by Spaniards to draw reluctant Amerindians into the market. An examination of repartimiento through the lens of New Institutional Economics provides an alternative understanding of this credit system. Characteristics of the repartimiento most often identified as exploitative are better explained as institutional adaptations designed to facilitate contract enforcement and economize on transaction costs in this cross-cultural trade. Consequently, this peculiar colonial institution served to expand trade.