Betting on a Revolution. The valuation of venal offices in France in the late Ancien Régime
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Oxford
Department Name: Economics
Abstract
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People |
ORCID iD |
| Rui Esteves (Principal Investigator) |
| Title | French venality database |
| Description | his project studies the expectations and behaviour of investors in a very particular financial market-the market for venal offices in France before the Revolution. Venality was a popular investment outlet before 1789. Once sold by the government, offices could be traded, rented out, and even left in inheritance. The French state paid a fixed interest to the holder, who could also earn wages or collect fees. Venality is often mentioned in the literature, but mostly based on limited information. This project, in contrast, aims to compile a much larger cross-section of offices based on the records of a tax levied on their value in 1771. This tax was unusual in that it allowed officeholders to fix the tax base themselves. The particular nature of the tax allows us to learn about investors expectations. By using asset pricing models we can relate the expected income stream and capital gains to the values fixed in 1771. This project will also permit quantifying the extent of venality. Unlike most instances of rent-seeking, the capital invested in venal offices and their returns are observable, because the practice was legal. The evidence on these will be compared to other studies on corruption and rent-seeking. |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Provided To Others? | No |
| Impact | This dataset is the empirical base for the research undergone and undergoing on the grant. |
| URL | http://reshare.ukdataservice.ac.uk/851256/ |
| Description | Macrohist |
| Organisation | London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London) |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Supervised one postdoc (Experienced Researcher) funded by a Marie Curie fellowship in the context of the Multi-ITN grant (identifier FP7-PEOPLE-2013-ITN) from December 2015 to November 2016. The postdoc's name is Daphne Alvarez Villa. Apart from general academic supervision, I provided leadership on a joint research project on sale of offices and political outcomes in the late colonial period in Spanish America. This project is still ongoing, though no longer funded by the ITN, and has produced preliminary results, which I share as working paper. We are further colaborating with Maria Alejandra Irigoin, a specialist in Latin American economic history, and faculty at the LSE. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Daphne was reponsible for compiling a large database of prices paid for political office, or to office-holders in exchange for the rents associated with those positions in Spanish colonial America, from the last quarter of the 17th century to the early decades of the 19th century. Once completed, we will use the data to answer several questions about the institution of venality just before the wave of South American independences. Among these are the private return from investment in public office and the relation between the prevalence of venality in the colonial period and the political outcomes of the recently independent republics (the topic of the working paper). |
| Impact | Working paper "Venality, Political Elites and the Extent of Democratization" (with Daphne Alvarez and Alejandra Irigoin). |
| Start Year | 2015 |
| Description | Macrohist |
| Organisation | Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions |
| Department | Initial Training Networks (ITN) |
| Country | Global |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| PI Contribution | Supervised one postdoc (Experienced Researcher) funded by a Marie Curie fellowship in the context of the Multi-ITN grant (identifier FP7-PEOPLE-2013-ITN) from December 2015 to November 2016. The postdoc's name is Daphne Alvarez Villa. Apart from general academic supervision, I provided leadership on a joint research project on sale of offices and political outcomes in the late colonial period in Spanish America. This project is still ongoing, though no longer funded by the ITN, and has produced preliminary results, which I share as working paper. We are further colaborating with Maria Alejandra Irigoin, a specialist in Latin American economic history, and faculty at the LSE. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Daphne was reponsible for compiling a large database of prices paid for political office, or to office-holders in exchange for the rents associated with those positions in Spanish colonial America, from the last quarter of the 17th century to the early decades of the 19th century. Once completed, we will use the data to answer several questions about the institution of venality just before the wave of South American independences. Among these are the private return from investment in public office and the relation between the prevalence of venality in the colonial period and the political outcomes of the recently independent republics (the topic of the working paper). |
| Impact | Working paper "Venality, Political Elites and the Extent of Democratization" (with Daphne Alvarez and Alejandra Irigoin). |
| Start Year | 2015 |