ABSTRACT
Regular public debt in the Papal States lagged far behind the main Italian city states. Consumption in Rome remained buoyant in the seventeenth century supposedly marked by economic crisis at the national level, and played a crucial role in sustaining government financial strategies. The traditional trust in papal bonds had already been badly shaken by the suspension of interest payment during the first Roman Republic in 1798 and 1799. The trend of the Roman stock exchange was a faithful mirror of the feeble economic system, and at the beginning of Italian unity public debt still played the leading role on the scenery of the Roman financial market. The economic congregation stressed that privilege and predominance of special interest groups had to be stamped out in order to keep Rome's stock exchange on an equal footing with European capital cities, from Naples to Livorno, Genoa, Marseille and Ancona.
