This paper has a lot to do. Apart from exploring the debate on Athenian credit and exchange across forty years, relating that discussion to broader engagement over the ancient economy, it also aims to reassess the arguments of key contributors to the debate. Hence the more frequent and longer-than-usual endnotes, which aim to indicate for the reader, however briefly, the relevance of modern books and articles, rather than simply listing, along the lines of ‘See generally Bloggins (1999)’.