Capitolo

Or do you prefer cash? Pensions in kind in pre-modern Germany and the Low Countries

  • Ludwig Pelzl
  • Jaco Zuijderduijn

In the later Middle Ages and early modern period, many European hospitals developed into commercial retirement homes that allowed investors to pay for lifelong food and lodging. Their clients consisted mainly of elderly citizens who decided to spend their final years enjoying a pension, often living by themselves or occasionally with a spouse. Corrodies can best be understood as life annuities in kind: food and lodging were provided until the corrodian – or the longest-living spouse of a couple – passed away. Demand was so great that institutions are known to have had waiting lists or to raffle seats among potential investors. We claim that corrodies allowed investors who were looking to secure their livelihood to mitigate the risks that came with financial instruments that paid in currency. Our paper contributes to a historiography that claims that payments in kind should not be considered ‘backwards’ but rather as techniques that offered protection against the whims of the market.

  • Keywords:
  • Corrodians,
  • pensions,
  • annuities,
  • payments in kind,
  • retirement homes,
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Ludwig Pelzl

European University Institute, Sweden

Jaco Zuijderduijn

Lund Universitet Ekonomihogskolan, Sweden - ORCID: 0000-0002-1296-008X

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Informazioni sul capitolo

Titolo del capitolo

Or do you prefer cash? Pensions in kind in pre-modern Germany and the Low Countries

Autori

Ludwig Pelzl, Jaco Zuijderduijn

Lingua

English

DOI

10.36253/979-12-215-0347-0.15

Opera sottoposta a peer review

Anno di pubblicazione

2024

Copyright

© 2024 Author(s)

Licenza d'uso

CC BY 4.0

Licenza dei metadati

CC0 1.0

Informazioni bibliografiche

Titolo del libro

Mezzi di scambio non monetari. Merci e servizi come monete alternative nelle economie dei secoli XIII-XVIII / Alternative currencies. Commodities and services as exchange currencies in the monetarized economies of the 13th to 18th centuries

Curatori

Angela Orlandi

Opera sottoposta a peer review

Numero di pagine

592

Anno di pubblicazione

2024

Copyright

© 2024 Author(s)

Licenza d'uso

CC BY 4.0

Licenza dei metadati

CC0 1.0

Editore

Firenze University Press

DOI

10.36253/979-12-215-0347-0

ISBN Print

979-12-215-0346-3

eISBN (pdf)

979-12-215-0347-0

eISBN (xml)

979-12-215-0348-7

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Datini Studies in Economic History

ISSN della collana

2975-1241

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2975-1195

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