A magisterial new history of commercial institutions developed through the study of merchant guilds.

1. Merchant guilds, efficiency, and social capital; 2. What was a merchant guild?; 3. Local merchant guilds; 4. Alien merchant guilds and companies; 5. Merchant guilds and rulers; 6. Commercial security; 7. Contract enforcement; 8. Principal-agent problems; 9. Information; 10. Price volatility; 11. Institutions, social capital and economic development.

Sheilagh Ogilvie is Professor of Economic History at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of the British Academy. Her prize-winning publications include State Corporatism and Proto-Industry: The Württemberg Black Forest 1590-1797 (Cambridge, 1997, winner of the Gyorgy Ranki Prize 1999) and A Bitter Living: Women, Markets, and Social Capital in Early Modern Germany (2003, winner of the René Kuczynski Prize 2004).