ABSTRACT

This paper examines the specificities of interpersonal credit networks in both a rural and an urban setting in pre-industrial Finland. To analyse peer-to-peer lending, the article studies a sample of 1047 probate inventories from the town of Kristinestad and its surrounding rural area, the parish of Lappfjärd. These probate inventories feature more than 5000 credit relations between households for the period 1850–1855 and 1905–1914. This paper also concerns itself with the changes pertaining to the advent of banking institutions in the mid-nineteenth century. Traditional behavioural sciences argue that formal institutions replaced informal ones because they are more efficient, more inclusive, or both. No longer needed, informal institutions are supposed to have disappeared when formal ones emerged. But this argument does not consider the social context – or embeddedness, a term coined by Granovetter – and the individuals evolving in it. Embeddedness does not disappear. Therefore, one may ask how banks penetrated communities and the credit networks that were already in place in order to supplant private lending. Tools from social network analysis help to draw insights into the features and changes pertaining to credit networks.

摘要

本文研究了前工业化芬兰农村和城市环境中人际信用网络的特殊性。为了分析 P2P 借贷，本文研究了来自 Kristinestad 镇及其周边农村地区（Lappfjärd 教区）的 1047 个遗嘱认证库存样本。这些遗嘱认证清单包含 1850-1855 年和 1905-1914 年期间的 5000 多个家庭之间的信用关系。本文还关注与 19 世纪中叶银行机构出现有关的变化。传统的行为科学认为，正式制度取代了非正式制度，因为它们更有效、更具包容性，或两者兼而有之。不再需要的非正式机构应该在正式机构出现时消失。但是这个论点没有考虑社会背景——或嵌入性，一个由 Granovetter 创造的术语——以及在其中进化的个人。嵌入性不会消失。因此，人们可能会问银行如何渗透到社区和已经存在的信贷网络以取代私人贷款。社交网络分析工具有助于深入了解与信用网络相关的特征和变化。