Economic Consequences of State Failure—Legal Capacity, Regulatory Activity, and Market Integration in Poland, 1505–1772
利用创新代理变量和年度数据，发现早期波兰议会的法律能力与监管活动促进了国内商品市场整合，而单一代表否决权导致的立法失效则加剧了市场分割，为理解欧洲议会政体间的“小分流”提供了新视角。
With use of innovative proxies and new annual data, I demonstrate that relatively high legal capacity and regulatory activity of the early-modern Polish parliament, the Seym, was positively associated with deeper domestic commodity market integration. Conversely, the lack of effective law-making, caused by the right of a single delegate to discontinue the Seym’s sessions, fostered market fragmentation. This indicates that early parliamentary regimes required legal capacity to harmonize domestic institutions and reduce the transaction costs. The Polish case suggests a hypothesis that the pre-1800 “Little Divergence” between European parliamentary regimes could be explained by differences in their governments’ capacities.