Chi è principale, chi è agente? : Informazione e reputazione in una controversia mercantile ebraico-cristiana (Stato pontificio, XVIII secolo)

This article provides one example of cross-cultural trade and credit re- lations in the second half of the eighteenth century. A dispute between a firm operating in the port of Marseilles, the Uncle and Nephew Benza, run by Christian merchants from Liguria, and a merchant house run by a young Jewish man living in Ancona, Salomon Vita Coen, is used to shed light on the sources of trust and reputation available in pre-industrial markets, and to derive indications of the roles played by the various actors involved in pre- modern economic transactions. In particular, the example suggests that the standard theoretical representations of the principal-agent relationship may prove inadequate to explain how pre-industrial markets functioned and failed.