Alberto Feenstra studied Global History at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. Previously he has been employed as research assistant at the Geldmuseum (Money Museum) in Utrecht. His current PhD research examines the integration of capital markets within the Dutch Republic between 1650 and 1800.

Research interests

Social  and economic history

Financial and Monetary history

Early Modern History

Global inequality and economic development in the long run

Finance without frontiers? The integration of provincial money markets in the Dutch Republic

This project analyses when and how money markets in the Dutch Republic integrated. The literature takes that integration more or less for granted and makes Holland interest rates to stand for the entire country, but his is mistaken. The few data we possess for interest rates in other provinces show deviations, suggesting that it took time for markets to integrate. What then limited integration? Were there barriers to the free movement of capital, risk factors, or institutional differences that made investors demand a higher reward? What made those differences disappear, and when? The present scarcity of provincial interest rate data also prevents us from understanding the patters of economic growth across the Republic and, more specifially, whether public indebtedness crowded out private investment. The project will collect qualitative and quantitative data about interest rates, transaction costs and market prices for public debt and private credit transaction, combining these into a comprehensive analysis of money market integration in the Dutch Republic. In doing so it will contribute to the theoretical debate about interest rates as a gauge for the quality of money market institutions, and provide new insights about how to understand similar integration processes today.

Supervisors:

prof.dr. Joost Jonker, prof. dr. Marjolein 't Hart

National research school

NW Posthumus Institute

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