Shopkeepers and Credit Allocation. Consumption Credit in an Old Regime Economy (Buenos Aires, 17th to 19th centuries)

Abstract

This work shows that during the Old Regime the absence of banks in Buenos Aires was counterbalanced by other mechanisms of credit delivery. While notarial credit was useful to match the necessities of merchants linked to long distance commerce, shopkeepers filled the demand of credit for daily consumption. This implied different allocation criteria, derived from the different social environments, geographical scopes and economic scales of the businesses: while notaries mediated between creditors and debtors that could not meet each other, belonging sometimes to different regional markets, to access big amount of commercial capital, shopkeepers provided food on clothes on credit to local neighbors for their daily necessities. Cases taken from seventeenth and eighteenth centuries will allow to shed light on these forms of credit mechanisms for consumption at the micro level.