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My dissertation uses historical records and a context-specific mechanism-design model to investigate the institutional and contractual arrangements that facilitated long-distance trade in late medieval Venice.This dissertation was awarded by the Department of Economics at the European University Institute under the inspiring supervision of Professors Avner Greif and Ramon Marimon with support from the Social Science History Institute at Stanford University. I also wish to thank Andrea Drago, Gavin Wright, Jaime Reis, and Leandro Prados de la Escosura for their help in various ways. The mobilisation of capital and the sharing of risk in long-distance trade could potentially promote economic prosperity, but it required that merchants were able to commit ex-ante not to breach their financial contracts ex-post. Financial contracting entails the exchange of tangible funds for the promise of future payments, but promises …