Accounting and food trade in sixteenth-century Ragusa: The diffusion of early double entry bookkeeping: An institutional perspective

This paper analyses the case of one of the most important merchant companies active in Ragusa (today Dubrovnik) in the second half of the sixteenth century, that owned by Vincenzo Stefani, to investigate, through the study of accounting records concerning foodstuff – wheat, spices and salt - the issue of the spread of accounting techniques via the channels of international trade, with particular reference to the role played by merchants and companies of merchants. New institutional sociology offers the theoretical framework for an investigation that is centered on the early double-entry bookkeeping as an institutionally determined practice.