Institutions, transaction costs, and the rise of merchant empires / Douglass C. North -- Merchants and states / M.N. Pearson -- The rise of merchant empires, 1400-1700 : a European counterpoint / Thomas A. Brady, Jr. -- Europe and the wider world, 1500-1700 : the military balance / Geoffrey Parker -- The pirate and the emperor : power and the law on the seas, 1450-1850 / Anne Pérotin-Dumon -- Transport costs and long-range trade, 1300-1800 : was there a European "Transport Revolution" in the early modern era? / Russell R. Menard -- Transaction costs : a note on merchant credit and the organization of private trade / Jacob M. Price -- Evolution of empire : the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean during the sixteenth century / Sanjay Subrahmanyam and Luís Filipe F.R. Thomaz -- Comparing the Tokagawa Shogunate with Hapsburg Spain : two silver-based empires in a global setting / Dennis O. Flynn -- Colonies as mercantile investments : the Luso-Brazilian Empire, 1500-1808 / José Jobson de Andrade Arruda -- Reflections on the organizing principle of premodern trade / K.N. Chaudhuri.