Fearing shortage of culturally significant fish, medieval societies reacted in several ways. In a culture of markets, scarce supply motivates sellers to demand and/or buyers to offer more for the commodity: anecdotes from the twelfth century and serial prices from the thirteenth indicate fish prices rising even past 1350. Ownership of the productive resource itself could capture some of those sellers’ gains, not to mention the prestige and power medieval society associated with landownership: elite acquisition of fishing rights had begun with early creation of private lordships, but by and after the twelfth century it also promised income from direct exploitation or from leasing operations to artisans (depriving local subsistence fishers). In contrast, relict and then emergent claimants to public authority could gain by regulating resource exploitation ‘for the public good’. From the 1200s onwards kings, territorial princes, and self-governing communes asserted control over fishing rights and activities, first on acknowledged public waters (large rivers, coastal waters) and eventually over practices and uses of private natural waters. The chapter explores grounds for regulating fisheries as a ‘public’ resource to allocate their value, settle disputes, ensure consumer safety, and occasionally to encourage what might now be called ‘sustainable’ uses within recognizable limits. Like the artisanal fisheries toward which they were directed, these cultural measures retained close ties between local natural ecosystems and consumers of fish.

This chapter is devoted to price formation and price trends in commodities. The chapter first discusses factors determining price levels, both in the short and long run. It thereafter turns to the blurred nature and instability of the short-run supply curve. The third focus is on price fluctuations in commodities, both the short-run instability as well as the long-run price trends. Fourth, alternative trading arrangements and their implications for price formation are explored. The final sections of the chapter discuss actual price quotations and the implications of exchange rates on commodity prices.