@booklet {63786,
	title = {Debt Repudiation and Risk Premia: The North-Weingast Thesis Revisited},
	year = {1998},
	note = {},
	month = {Jul 1, 1998},
	abstract = {North and Weingast (1989) argued that the English Glorious Revolution of 1688 redistributed political power in such a way as to enhance the enforcement of property rights. They supported their hypothesis by presenting evidence that interest rates fell and interpreted this as a fall in the risk premium demanded by lenders. I argue that one cannot test their theory in this way since it implicitly rests on the assumption that the risk of debt repudiation was exogenous. This was clearly not so. If lenders anticipated that the incentives of the Stuart monarchs to default depended on the interest rate, then instead of changing a risk premium, they ration credit. There is a fact much evidence that this was the case. In these circumstances a reduction in the desire, or the ability, of the monarch to default leads not to a fall in interest rates, but a relaxation of rationing. Thus the theory of North and Weingast is immune to the critique of Clark (1996) and is entirely consistent with the available evidence.},
	author = {Robinson, James A.}
}
