The international financial system evolved out of the need for trade settlement and trade
credit as early as 4000 BCE. Then, from the late thirteenth century, the capital account …

The bill of exchange was the most important written instrument in the international financial
world of the later middle ages. Using the evidence of nearly 2,000 bills of exchange …

We estimate the effect of money supply changes on the real economy by exploiting a
recurring natural experiment: maritime disasters in the Spanish Empire (1531–1810) that …

The paper focusses on the spread of Hindu-Arabic arithmetic among European practitioners.
The analysis is based on an original database recording detailed information on over 1200 …

Studies of the early modern exchange market have usually focused on the strategies of
traders who made profits from differences in exchange rates. This article instead focuses on …

This paper adopts a traditional critical-historical research methodology focusing on context
and function to investigate and explain the factors that led to widespread adoption and …

In the fragmented geographical, fiscal, and financial state inherited by Philip II of Spain,
while the public debt reached an unprecedented level (50–60 per cent of GDP), the critical …

The accumulation of knowledge and its application to a variety of human needs is a
discontinuous process that involves innovation and change. While much has been written …

This article explores the complex dynamics of financial innovation in early modern times,
challenging linear models of temporal and spatial divisions that tend to shape our …

Based on the reconstruction of the monetary flows of a merchant-banking company
operating in Barcelona at the beginning of the fifteenth century, this study aims to …