Markets for land, labor, and capital in northern Italy and the Low Countries, twelfth to seventeenth centuries'

Abstract

Comparative analysis of the markets for land, labor, and capital in north-central Italy and the Low Countries in the late Middle Ages and the early modern period reveals that urbanization in itself was not the crucial variable in the quality and effect of developing factor markets. More important was the counterweight offered in this process by territorial lords and rural interests to the influence of urban elites. Without this counterweight, urban elites could exploit factor markets to their own ends.