Lilia Costabile is Full Professor of Economics at the University of Naples Federico II. She received her PhD at the University of Cambridge, where she is also Life Member of Clare Hall. In 2016 she received the Prize of the President of the Italian Republic, awarded by the Accademia dei Lincei, for her research in Economics. She is currently involved in a project on “Minimalism and Activism in Central Banking: Lesson from the History of Economic Thought” funded by the ECB through ESHET. She has published widely in academic journals and is the author of a book on Malthus: Sviluppo e ristagno della produzione capitalistica as well as the editor of Istituzioni e sviluppo economico nel Mezzogiorno, and Institutions for Social Well-Being: Alternatives for Europe. Larry Neal is Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Research Associate of the National Bureauof Economic Research. Co-editor of the 2-volume Cambridge History of Capitalism, and the 4-volume History of Financial Crises, his books include The Rise of Financial Capitalism: International Capital Markets in the Age of Reason, ‘I am not master of events’: The Speculations of John Law and Lord Londonderry in the Mississippi and South Sea Bubbles, and A Concise History of International Finance: From Babylon to Bernanke.