1Markets and Economic Growth: The Grain Market of Medieval

Many have believed that this was the result of political and cultural constraints on the operation of markets. Here I show using information of grain yields and prices at 227 different locations that the most important of all markets, that for grain, was both extensive and relatively efficient. Whatever the rhetoric of medieval society the real effect of constraints on the operation the grain market seem to have been minimal. England had an elaborate market economy at least 500 years before it had sustained economic growth. 1