# kaal:claim:3782193-030

**Claim.** The strong trust that sustained Maghribi trade, in which embezzlement was rare despite extreme information asymmetry, cannot be explained by a strong centralized government, since the Maghribis could not form a centralized legal or political hierarchy and the official legal channels were slow and unreliable.

**Type.** empirical  **Support.** evidenced

**Holds when.**

- Maghribi Jewish traders around 1000 AD under the Fatimid caliphate

**Source quote.**

> In point of fact, the records show that such embezzlement was rare. Instead, a strong sense of trust pervaded. So what mechanism protected the principals from their agents' asymmetric information? The answer was not a strong centralized gov- ernment.

**From.** Craig Calcaterra, Wulf A. Kaal, *Historical Sketches of Centralization vs. Decentralization* (2021), Maghribi traders’ solution, page 24

**Cite as.** Craig Calcaterra, Wulf A. Kaal, Historical Sketches of Centralization vs. Decentralization (2021). SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3782193

**Verify.** sha256 of source PDF `74df9cc9a19a098bdacd0424a4174795f6e184f7a31c8ee7541195186701ebd2` at https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wulfkaal/Academic-Papers/main/papers/pdf/Calcaterra%20and%20Kaal%20-%202021%20-%20Historical%20Sketches%20of%20Centralization%20vs.%20Decentralization.pdf

**Topics.** ai-and-agents, corporate-governance, disclosure, reputation, law-and-legal-systems, compliance

**Keywords.** maghribi-traders, principal-agent-problem, information-asymmetry, trust, legal-enforcement

**Related claims.**

- extended_by: https://wulfkaal.github.io/claims/3782210-040

**Canonical form.** This markdown file is the canonical hashed representation of the claim. Its sha256 is the content hash used for attestation.