I was not being literal, though I’m fairly sure I’m right for some not-too-loose definition of the term. Inspiration did come from The Narrow Corridor[1], whic

I was not being literal, though I’m fairly sure I’m right for some not-too-loose definition of the term. Inspiration did come from The Narrow Corridor[1], which has a good history of the building of state capacity in Europe, and how it affected trade. In particular, cost falls, which is one way “attacked and/or killed by bandits” could be proxied. Another thing that drives down cost is reducing the number of tolls along the road, as discussed in this paper: https://mason.gmu.edu/~mkoyama2/About_files/StateCapacitySurvey.pdf https://mason.gmu.edu/~mkoyama2/About_files/StateCapacitySur... So again, while I don’t think that it’s a stretch to assume traders who had to cross dangerous territories accounted for the dangers, I don’t have a direct source. :-) [1] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/555400/the-narrow-corridor-by-daron-acemoglu-and-james-a-robinson/ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/555400/the-narrow-c...