Aggirare i costi : i prodotti di massa tra fiscalità e domanda nelle fonti fiscali dell'Italia nord-orientale (XV secolo)

This article reassesses the impact of commercial costs on the circulation of mass commodities in fifteenth-century northeastern Italy. Drawing on customs and fiscal records from Conegliano, Upper Friuli, and Padua, it examines low-quality woollen cloth, iron, steel, and metalware through database and GIS analysis. The evidence challenges the assumption that fragmented taxation confined low-value, bulky goods to local markets. These commodities moved across interregional networks despite multiple duties and inefficient transport. Their competitiveness depended less on fiscal harmonization than on strong demand, complementary regional specialization, merchant intermediation, and the compression of labour and production costs. The study argues that integrated economic spaces could develop around, rather than in spite of, segmented fiscal systems. [Publisher's text]