Does the prosperity of medieval manors depend on their position in the feudal system? How large are these effects? And what are the underlying economic mechanisms? Using Domesday Book, a unique country-wide survey conducted by William the Conqueror, we reinterpret the eleventh-century English feudal system as a network in which manors are linked to one another based on their common ownership structure. Both a reduced-form and a more structural approach reveal the existence of external economies of scale: manorial prosperity was closely intertwined with the fortune of feudal peers. Our findings quantitatively establish the existence of feudal coordination in High-Medieval agricultural activities, revealing how institutionalized interactions could serve to mitigate transaction costs.

中世纪庄园的繁荣是否取决于他们在封建制度中的地位？这些影响有多大？潜在的经济机制是什么？我们使用征服者威廉在全国范围内进行的独特调查《末日审判之书》，将 11 世纪的英国封建制度重新解释为一个网络，在这个网络中，庄园根据其共同的所有权结构相互联系。简化形式和更结构化的方法都揭示了外部规模经济的存在：庄园的繁荣与封建贵族的财富密切相关。我们的研究结果定量地证实了中世纪晚期农业活动中封建协调的存在，揭示了制度化的互动如何有助于降低交易成本。