Moving Money
Banking and Finance in the Industrialized World

Moving Money is an original analysis of the influence of politics on financial systems.

Daniel Verdier (Author)

9780521891127, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 13 February 2003

326 pages, 35 b/w illus. 23 tables
22.8 x 15.2 x 2.2 cm, 0.517 kg

"I highly recommend _Moving Money_ to anyone interested in comparative economic history, financial systems, or financial history. The book's connections between political and financial structure represent an original and important contribution." EH.NET, Scott A. Redenius, Department of Economics, Bryn Mawr College

Moving Money analyses the influence of politics on financial systems. Daniel Verdier examines how information asymmetry and economies of scale over time have created a redistributional conflict between large and small banks, financial centres and their peripheries, and he discusses how governments have attempted to arbitrate this conflict. He argues that centralized states have tended to create concentrated, internationalized, market-based and specialized financial systems, whereas decentralized states have favoured dispersed, national, bank-based and, with a few exceptions, universal systems. Verdier then sets out to uncover the sources, political and economic, of cross-country variation in financial market organization, examining 15 to 20 OECD countries from 1850 onwards.

Introduction
Part I. Theoretical Conjectures on Banking, Finance and Politics: 1. Capital scarcity, capital mobility, and information asymmetry: a selective overview
2. The institutions of capital mobility
Part II. The First Expansion (1850–1913): 3. The advent of deposit banking
4. The internationalization of finance
5. The origins of corporate security markets
6. The origins of universal banking
Part III. The Second Expansion (1960–2000): 7. Sectoral realignment
8. The globalization of banking
9. The growth of security markets
10. Choosing the right product mix
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Economic history [KCZ], Political economy [KCP], Macroeconomics [KCB]