The International Research Network in Comparative Economic History (henceforth referred to as GDRI, after the French ‘Groupe de recherche international’) proposes to undertake the first large-scale investigation on a variety of economic institutions which have been crucial to the achievement of economic development in Asia and in Europe: business partnerships, share-holding companies, maritime insurance, the bill of exchange and accounting methods, among others. The main purpose of this study is to conduct a systematic comparison of the trajectories of peculiar economic institutions and business practices in different environments: Europe and Asia. It will draw on the analysis of an unpublished collection of private documents, local gazettes, stone inscriptions, prescriptive narratives and legal archives relating to economic development and merchants’ memoirs and genealogies over a period of five centuries, from the 16^th to the 20^th.