Beginning with the first decades of the sixteenth century, the principal states of northern Italy (along with other states, leaders in the ‘financial revolution’, both on and off the peninsula) faced the problem of long-term public financing by introducing innovations that notably increased collection of monies and tied financial capital to the state organization. These were – even with some differences – the progressive substitution of the emission of bonds for compulsory loans. These securities were freely subscribed, the interest was guaranteed by a fixed fiscal source, there was no set time for the return of capital, they were marketable, they could be inherited and they were exempt from confiscation and taxes. This kind of debt did not constitute the only method used by these states to obtain money. The difficulties of sorting out the stratified typologies are well known; beside the short-term loan or floating debt, there was the sale of offices, pensions, forced advance payments and even rewards, but quite soon all these types of short-term debt began to be converted into the new solution. The earmarking of future tax income for interest payment on the bonds issued, connected to their transferability, set up a public funded debt, thus long-term arrangements in this form became prevalent.

If the governments of Milan, Venice, Turin, Genoa and the Farnese Duchy were pushed in this direction by the extraordinary expansion of their balances due to war costs and the limits of their own fiscal systems (see section 1, below), the notable growth of this new form of financing came about because of its acceptance by a large segment of subjects, who found this type of investment suitable to their own needs (see section 2, below). In some periods a real push-pull mechanism occurred during which the buyers' response was very quick; in 1559 the sale of 600,000 lire of securities at 12 per cent by the Ferrata della Loggia deimercanti of Milan was completed in only ten days, while in 1639 in Venice, a series of deposits at 5 per cent was sold out in six days; in Turin in 1703 some purchasers, coming late at the Treasury Office, offered to subscribe bonds at 5 per cent of interest rate instead of 6 per cent.