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Based on a regional case study, this article argues that craft guilds were able to respond adaptively to economic and institutional changes. Such flexibility limited their independent and regular impact on regional or national economies in early modern Europe.
Having contributed to economic growth in the sixteenth century, the Aragonese textile guilds fell prey to technological stagnation in the seventeenth and restricted competition in urban product and labour markets as the region’s economy contracted. Their actions thus undermined quality and increased the cost of domestic manufactures.
The regional institutions nevertheless tolerated these strategies within certain limits, because they saw the guilds as necessary to the organization of urban markets and production.
