Mark Casson is Professor of Economics at the University of Reading and Director of the Centre for Institutions and Economic History at Reading. He has long-standing research interests in entrepreneurship, business culture, the economics of the multinational enterprise, business history, the economic history of towns, and transport studies. He was President of the Association of Business Historians and member of the Council of the Royal and Economic Society. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, consulting editor of the Journal of World Business and the International Business Review, Chair of Trustees of the Business Enterprise Heritage Trust and a member of the History Committee of the Royal Statistical Society (RSS).

John S. Lee is a researcher at the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York. His research interests are in the economy and society of medieval England, and local and regional history. His work has ranged from studies of merchants and fairs, and towns and their hinterlands, to religious commemorative practices and the estates of the Knights Templar.