Provides a comparative analysis of the development of informal credit markets in countries embedded in different institutional, political and economic contexts
Based on new empirical studies
Highlights how the diversity of institutional and socio-economic frameworks affected the credit market
Covers a range of financial intermediaries including merchants, notaries, town secretaries, pious foundations, scriveners, and institutions

Marcella Lorenzini is a Post-doc Researcher at the University of Trento, Italy. Her work researches how credit markets develop in the absence of formal institutions. Her recent publications include one monograph and a chapter in a collected volume on Infrastructure Financing in the Early Modern Age.

Cinzia Lorandini is an Associate Professor in Economic History at the University of Trento, Italy. Her research mainly focuses on credit markets and trade in the early modern and modern period. She has authored several publications on these topics, including two monographs and one article for the journal Business History.

D’Maris Coffman is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Economics and Finance of the Built Environment at UCL Bartlett, UK and Director of the Bartlett School of Construction and Project Management. Prior to this D’Maris was a Leverhulme/Newton Trust Early Career Fellow at the History Faculty of the University ofCambridge, UK, and Fellow and Director of the Centre of Financial History at Newnham College, UK. She works on the relationship between public finance and private capital markets in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe and sits on the Council of the Economic History Society.