Financial Structures And Regulation A Comparison Of Crises In The Uk Usa And Italy

A survey of past financial crises, starting with the great banking collapses of the interwar period. The current turmoil has prompted a number of questions regarding both its origins and ways to avoid its repetition. The historical background and the evolving institutional framework of banking and financial systems are at the center of this book.

This book offers a critical look at prominent theories of financial crisis to try to understand how prepared the profession is for identifying the next financial crisis. An analysis of the first financial crisis of the twenty-first century serves as a starting point for rethinking the efficacy of existing economic models and theories.

This book examines regulatory capacity beyond the nation state. It suggests that we can only understand why EU agencies are able to build EU regulatory capacity if we acknowledge that national regulators provide their expertise, staff and resources to the regulatory processes taking place in these EU bodies. This raises the puzzle of why national regulators are willing to provide ‘life support’ to potentially rival organisations. The book is devoted to answering this question in order to understand how EU regulatory capacity is created in the absence of a full supranational regulatory bureaucracy. To do so, the book studies to what extent national regulators from two countries (the UK and Germany) support EU agencies in their work across four policy sectors (drug safety, food safety, maritime safety and banking supervision). The book makes a significant contribution by developing a bureaucratic politics perspective that highlights the importance of national regulators for EU regulatory capacity building.

Why was the Italian Banking System more resilient during the sub-prime crisis and harder-hit in the sovereign crisis? Will their strength in the retail market result as an asset or a liability for Italian banks in the future? This book offers an in-depth analysis of one of the most important EU banking systems its attempts to weather the crisis.

This book presents an in-depth appreciation of key topics related to the behaviour of financial institutions in the crisis and stresses areas of major research interest. It covers a selection of papers specialising ranging from the analysis of bank and stock market performance in the crisis, to other areas such as microinsurance and social lending.

The current financial crisis started from the US real estate market and after, though the increase of risk premium requested by investors and due to the lack of liquidity of all financial markets, it became a world financial crisis. A detailed analysis during the crisis focuses attention on asset management, the real estate and public sector.

The role of central banks as a hinge on which the financial system rests has returned to the top of the political agenda in recent years. The global financial crisis has resulted in many changes for central banks, including renewed power in financial supervision and reduced restrictions in their implementation of monetary policies. This book argues that central banks play a key role in financial systems, presenting the European Central Bank as a specific example of an institution that uses its uniquely independent position and wide margins of discretion to provide an array of important functions. It illustrates how central banks promote the security and efficiency of payment systems, pursue price stability, and accommodate the optimal utilization of the resources, labour and capital available to an economy. Stabilising Capitalism demonstrates how these institutions also aid in dealing with the risk of financial collapse and permit the continuity of public expenditure when the government is unable to place securities in the bond market. The author concludes by suggesting that although many consider the idea of this role for central banks to be outdated, these institutions form the root of the capitalist market economy and act as a bastion against financial instability.

The 'good life' for households has passed. The unwanted result which accompanied it is the sea of red ink. Confidence in the western way of life will not return until the current mess of a dysfunctional society, and its economy, is cleared out. Household Finance explains why and how this can be done.