We analyse the estate composition of the richest 30 per cent of people who died in the Netherlands in 1921 to find that households used a broad range of institutions to meet their financial demands. Goods and services were either paid in cash or settled periodically with suppliers. Despite the strong growth of commercial banking in the previous decades, households still made extensive use of peer-topeer loans, with or without the added security of notarial contracts. Banks only possessed a competitive edge in savings accounts for small surpluses and current accounts, the latter used most frequently by business owners born after 1870. Distance to the nearest bank office did not matter for these people, but wealthy urbanites were more inclined to use banks than their counterparts in the countryside.

This paper presents a detailed historical account of the Bank of Twente (Twentsche Bankvereeniging), launched in 1861 and, for most of the subsequent decades, the largest, fastest-growing, and most profitable bank in the Netherlands. It follows the narrative analysis approach to illustrate that the circumscribed use of a limited partnership was rooted in the organizational form having a flaw of its own that, under particular circumstances, created serious agency costs. As the bank grew, so did the agency costs, finally forcing the bank to incorporate in 1917.

Through a close reading of scattered, disparate, and largely unconnected secondary sources, supplemented with the analysis of primary sources, and backed by economic theory, this paper explores the origins, development, and socio-economic impact of so-called cosignatory lending institutions. These historical institutions were designed to issue small loans to small businesses and households and shared a reliance on cosigners to secure loans and on weekly instalments to repay them. Their shared lending format was flexible enough to display regional variations and this enabled cosignatory lending institutions to operate in societies characterized by notable differences in wealth and economic structure. It also allowed cosignatory lending institutions to fare better in a more urbanized, heterogeneous context than the more well-known credit cooperatives. As such, this systematic overview helps us better understand how credit markets were made more inclusive in urban contexts, which historical circumstances played a role in this, and perhaps even whether and how the success of cosignatory lending institutions may be replicated in present-day developed and less-developed economies.

This article introduces a newly constructed dataset (i.e. the Tafel v-bis Dataset) containing summary information for all Dutch citizens who died in 1921 and were subject to inheritance taxation. This dataset provides personal and socio-economic information on 24,263 individuals, including their total wealth, age, profession, residence and marital status at their time of death. Consequently, this dataset can be useful for researchers stemming from various academic disciplines. The article first discusses the range of possible uses of the dataset. Then the authors explain how they constructed the dataset and provide the necessary criticism regarding the underlying source material. The dataset is available via the Utrecht University data platform, yoda.

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