ERC Advanced Grant · 2024
Colonial credit and financial diversity in the Global South: Spanish America 1600-1820
Did the Spanish Empire bequeath weak credit markets to Spanish American Republics? Scholars cite a colonial legacy of extractive institutions as the root cause of financial and fiscal crises in Spanish America since Independence (1808-20s). Colonial credit was archaic. Modern European private banking institutions only arrived in Spanish America after 1850. The credit sector remained unstable, failed to service large parts of the population, and the cost of capital (the interest rate) was very high. The consequences were low private and public investment, poor economic growth, inequality, and political instability. COFILA challenges this Euro-centric narrative, which assumes that only the…
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