AveTransRisk investigated maritime risk management in late medieval and early modern Europe. It analysed the development of historical institutions, and their impact on economic development, through the comparative investigation of a specific legal instrument – General Average (GA) – which still underpins maritime trade by redistributing damages’ costs across all interested parties. ‘Averages’ are a legal instrument used since Antiquity, and their mutual nature makes their study particularly topical today, as the current crisis of the Anglo-American model of capitalist economic development is fostering interest in different approaches and solutions.
The results of the project have confirmed and strengthened the original hypothesis about the deep roots of intra-European institutional diversity, providing further evidence of the developments of different paths of economic development across Europe, with important contemporary repercussions for both the understanding, and the future developments of European economy/ies. From the scientific perspective the results of the project have confirmed the long-term resilience of alternative credit and risk-management structures and institutions, whose study has been neglected as they are not in line with the standard and classic narrative of economic development, which has been shaped by the Anglo-American experience.
Throughout the project lifespan there have been plenty of opportunity for engagement with civil society and non- academic partners. The most potentially interesting result of this has been to put Maria Fusaro (PI) in collaboration with colleagues working on using the principle of General Average mutual apportioning to devise new solutions that shall provide a more equitable taxation to counteract the planet climate emergency. This being the highest risk to human life, this collaboration has potential for impact truly on the planetary scale.
