The Role of Banks in the Interwar Economy

Cambridge University Press, 5/9/1991
EAN 9780521394376, ISBN10: 0521394376

Hardcover, 290 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm
Language: English

Although international finance and banking has been the subject of much research and writing, the economic impact of banks on industrial structures and the relations between banking and industry in the twentieth century have remained a relatively unexplored area. This 1991 volume examines and interprets the economic effect of the financing of industry by banks and of the banks' credit intermediation in industrialised economies. Particular attention is given to the interplay of economics and politics, to the connections between bankers and industrialists, and to the significance of interlocking directorships. A special section is devoted to a hitherto wholly neglected problem in economic history: the vital influence of universal banking in small but highly industrialised countries in central Europe and Scandinavia.

Preface
1. Introduction Harold James
2. Political disputes about the role of banks Gerald D. Feldman
3. Universal banking in interwar Central Europe Fritz Weber
4. Comparing the interwar banking history of five small countries in north-west Europe Ulf Olsson
5. American bankers and Britain's fall from gold Diane B. Kunz
6. Banks and the problem of capital shortage in Germany, 1918–23 Gerald D. Feldman
7. State, banks and industry in Sweden, with some reference to the Scandinavian countries Mats Larsson
8. State, banks and industry in Belgium and The Netherlands, 1919–39 Guy Vanthemsche
9. Investment behaviour of industrial joint-stock companies and industrial shareholding by the Österreichische Credit-Anstalt
inducement or obstacle to renewal and change in industry in interwar Austria Alois Mosser and Alice Teichova
10. Financing of Hungarian industry by the Commercial Bank of Pest
a case study Elizabeth A. Boross
11. The rise and fall of German-inspired mixed banking in Italy, 1894–1936 Douglas J. Forsyth
12. Banking and economic development in interwar Greece Mark Mazower
13. Why Canadian banks did not collapse in the 1930s Ian M. Drummond
14. Japanese banks and national economic policy, 1920–36 W. Miles Fletcher III
Index.