IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_1302.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Use and Abuse of Trust: Social Capital and its Deployment by Early Modern Guilds

Author

Listed:
  • Sheilagh Ogilvie

Abstract

Guilds are social scientists’ favoured historical example of institutions generating a ‘social capital’ of trust that benefited entire economies. This article considers this view in the light of empirical findings for early modern Europe. It draws the distinction between a ‘particularized’ trust in persons of known attributes and a ‘generalized’ trust that applies even to strangers. This is paralleled by the distinction between a ‘differential’ trust in institutions that enforce the rights of certain groups and a ‘uniform’ trust in impartial institutions that enforce the rights of all. Guilds had the potential to generate the particularized and differential trust to solve market failures relating to product quality, training, and innovation, although the empirical findings suggest that they often failed to fulfil this potential. Guilds also had the potential to abuse their trust, and the empirical findings show that they indeed manipulated their social capital of shared norms, common information, mutual sanctions, and collective political action to benefit their members at others’ expense, blocking the spread of generalized and uniform trust. Counter to the assumptions of social capital theory, the example of pre-industrial guilds suggests that the particularized and differential trust fostered by associative institutions do not favour but hinder the generalized and uniform trust fostered by impartial institutions.

Suggested Citation

  • Sheilagh Ogilvie, 2004. "The Use and Abuse of Trust: Social Capital and its Deployment by Early Modern Guilds," CESifo Working Paper Series 1302, CESifo.
  • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_1302
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp1302.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Graf Lambsdorff, Johann & Nell, Mathias, 2005. "Let them take gifts, and cheat those who seek influence," Passauer Diskussionspapiere, Volkswirtschaftliche Reihe V-41-05, University of Passau, Faculty of Business and Economics.
    2. repec:got:cegedp:59 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Guinnane Timothy W., 2005. "Trust: A Concept Too Many," Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte / Economic History Yearbook, De Gruyter, vol. 46(1), pages 77-92, June.
    4. Raj, Prateek, 2017. "Origins of Impersonal Markets in Commercial and Communication Revolutions of Europe," Working Papers 266, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State.
    5. Guinnane, Timothy W. & Ogilvie, Sheilagh, 2008. "Institutions and Demographic Responses to Shocks: Wuttemberg, 1634-1870," Center Discussion Papers 5977, Yale University, Economic Growth Center.
    6. Franco Mariuzzo & Patrick Paul Walsh & Ciara Whelan, 2004. "EU Merger Control in Differentiated Product Industries," CESifo Working Paper Series 1312, CESifo.
    7. David Dolejší, 2022. "Feudal bargain in Prague: The rise, spread, and fall of craft guilds," Rationality and Society, , vol. 34(2), pages 237-267, May.
    8. Mathias Nell, 2009. "Contracts obtained by means of bribery: should they be void or valid?," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 27(2), pages 159-176, April.
    9. Schwarzberg, Raphaelle, 2010. "Becoming a London goldsmith in the seventeenth century: social capital and mobility of apprentices and masters of the guild," Economic History Working Papers 28446, London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Economic History.
    10. Sheilagh Ogilvie, 2007. "'Whatever Is, Is Right'?, Economic Institutions in Pre-Industrial Europe (Tawney Lecture 2006)," CESifo Working Paper Series 2066, CESifo.
    11. Dufhues, Thomas & Buchenrieder, Gertrud & Fischer, Isabel, 2006. "Social capital and rural development: literature review and current state of the art [Sozialkapital und ländliche Entwicklung: Literaturüberblick und gegenwärtiger Stand der Forschung]," IAMO Discussion Papers 96, Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies (IAMO).
    12. Dennison, Tracy & Ogilvie, Sheilagh, 2014. "Does the European Marriage Pattern Explain Economic Growth?," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 74(3), pages 651-693, September.
    13. Lambsdorff, Johann Graf & Frank, Björn, 2010. "Bribing versus gift-giving - An experiment," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 347-357, June.
    14. Lambsdorff, Johann & Nell, Mathias, 2007. "Fighting corruption with asymmetric penalties and leniency," University of Göttingen Working Papers in Economics 59, University of Goettingen, Department of Economics.
    15. Sheilagh Ogilvie, 2014. "The Economics of Guilds," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 28(4), pages 169-192, Fall.
    16. Alexander Klein & Sheilagh Ogilvie, 2016. "Occupational structure in the Czech lands under the second serfdom," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 69(2), pages 493-521, May.
    17. Lisbeth Rodrigues, 2016. "Social capital and litigation: the case of the Misericórdia of Lisbon during the eighteenth century," Working Papers 16003, Economic History Society.
    18. repec:zbw:iamodp:92017 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Sriya Iyer & Michael Kitson & Bernard Toh, 2005. "Social capital, economic growth and regional development," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(8), pages 1015-1040.
    20. Lambsdorff, Johann Graf & Frank, Björn, 2011. "Corrupt reciprocity - Experimental evidence on a men's game," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 116-125, June.
    21. Ogilvie, Sheilagh & Carus, A.W., 2014. "Institutions and Economic Growth in Historical Perspective," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 8, pages 403-513, Elsevier.
    22. Francisco Herreros, 2008. "The State and the Creation of an Environment for the Growing of Trust," Rationality and Society, , vol. 20(4), pages 497-521, November.
    23. Sheilagh Ogilvie & Jeremy Edwards, 2011. "What lessons can we draw from the Champagne Fairs?," Working Papers 11007, Economic History Society.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_1302. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.