The organization of manufacturing in medieval England: A link between social and economic change

This dissertation investigates the organization of manufacturing in late-medieval England. Chapter 1 reviews the conventional academic wisdom and reveals where it went wrong. Guilds of manufacturers did not monopolize markets during the Middle Ages. Guilds in different towns competed against each other for the business of the bulk of the population who lived in the hinterland. Guilds that manufactured durable goods sold their merchandise to middlemen who distributed it in distant towns, rural villages, and foreign markets.;Chapter 2 explains how guilds marketed merchandise to consumers in those places. Guilds created reputations for product quality. Reputations allayed consumers' fears about purchasing defective products, encouraged consumers to purchase manufactured merchandise, and increased the demand for industrial output. Reputations, in other words, mitigated the adverse selection that afflicted markets for manufactures during the Middle Ages.;Chapter 3 turns from product markets to internal organization. Guilds of manufacturers provided an array of religious and fraternal services. Guilds hired priests, financed parishes, wore liveries, provided social standing in class-conscious medieval society, and insured members against the risks of everyday life. Guilds bundled those services together because bundling them together allowed guilds to use one as a lever to solve the incentive problems that inhibited the provision of the others.;Bundling had an important consequence. It linked guilds' abilities to provide the social and industrial services. When guilds provided substantial social services, members would not free fide on the organization's reputation, because if they were caught, the guild would take those social services away. Conversely, when guilds provided valuable industrial services, members would not abuse the organization's social benefits, because if they were caught, the guild could take the industrial services away.;This dissertation concludes that the link between social and economic activity within guilds linked social and economic change in the wider world. Social upheavals that raised the value of guilds' social services enabled guilds to expand their industrial activities. Cataclysms such as religious reformation that lowered the value of guilds' social services restricted guilds' industrial activities. These links were hitherto unnoted consequences of the organization of manufacturing in late-medieval England.