Financial systems are crucial to the allocation of resources in a modern economy. They channel household savings to the corporate sector and allocate investment funds among firms; they allow intertemporal smoothing of consumption by households and expenditures by firms; and they enable households and firms to share risks. These functions are common to the financial systems of most developed economies. Yet the form of these financial systems varies widely. In the United States and the United Kingdom competitive markets dominate the financial landscape, whereas in France, Germany, and Japan banks have traditionally played the most important role. Why do different countries have such different financial systems? Is one system better than all the others? Do different systems merely represent alternative ways of satisfying similar needs? Is the current trend toward market-based systems desirable? Franklin Allen and Douglas Gale argue that the view that market-based systems are best is simplistic. A more nuanced approach is necessary. For example, financial markets may be bad for risk sharing; competition in banking may be inefficient; financial crises can be good as well as bad; and separation of ownership and control can be optimal. Financial institutions are not simply veils, disguising the allocation mechanism without affecting it, but are crucial to overcoming market imperfections. An optimal financial system relies on both financial markets and financial intermediaries.

比较金融系统 = Comparing financial systems

The article outlines an integrated theoretical framework identifying the causal processes underlying formation, growth, and adaptive change in marketing systems Beginning with the co-evolution of 

Formation, Growth, and Adaptive Change in Marketing Systems

The Great Recession of 2008-9 imposed a negative shock on the global economy comparable to the 1930s Great Depression. Nevertheless, one fundamental distinction between the Great Depression and the Great Recession is that the 2008-9 global economic contraction did not result in a massive wave of new protectionism. Comprehending why the 2008-9 economic crisis failed to trigger a downward spiral of beggar-thy-neighbour policies is fundamental to understanding the resilience of the global economy and the 21st century multilateral trading system. While there was not a large scale resort to protectionism, the facts simply do not support the idea that countries did not adjust their trade policies during this period. Policies like antidumping, safeguards, and countervailing duties – what this volume refers to collectively as temporary trade barriers (TTBs) – played an important and perhaps even critical role during the 2008-9 crisis. This Introduction provides a summary and timeline of events in the Great Recession, including its macroeconomic and trade impacts, the uncertainty over trade policy in 2008-9, and the response to calls for additional monitoring of trade policy. In particular, this Introductions highlights the real time monitoring efforts of the World Bank’s Global Antidumping Database and subsequent Temporary Trade Barriers Database. These efforts both addressed some of the immediate concern about the unknown scale of protectionism taking place in 2008-9 and revealed a lack of informational preparedness that has ultimately spurred this volume’s research. The Introduction then summarizes new research on how the eleven economies of focus in this volume - four high-income and seven emerging – collectively increased by 25% the imported products that they subject to TTB import protection during the crisis. Nevertheless, there is substantial heterogeneity to this result across countries – e.g., developing countries used TTBs to cover 39% more imported products by the end of 2009 compared to 2007, whereas recession-ravaged high-income economies surprisingly increased their coverage by only 4%. Finally, the Introduction summarizes how the volume's authors apply a new methodological approach, as well as detailed, product-level data on TTBs, trade flows, and other trade policies to better interpret these crisis-era changes in historical context.

Introduction to 'The Great Recession and Import Protection: The Role of Temporary Trade Barriers'

Irrigated agriculture makes societies more likely to be ruled by authoritarian regimes. Ancient societies have long been thought to follow this pattern. We empirically show that irrigation affects political regimes even in the present. To avoid endogeneity, we use geographical and climatic variation to identify irrigation dependent societies. We find that countries whose agriculture depended on irrigation are about six points less democratic on the 21-point polity2 scale than countries where agriculture has been rainfed. We find qualitatively similar results across regions within countries. We argue that the effect has historical origins: irrigation allowed landed elites in arid areas to monopolize water and arable land. This made elites more powerful and better able to oppose democratization. Consistent with this conjecture, we show that irrigation dependence predicts land inequality both at the country level, and in premodern societies surveyed by ethnographers.

/pdf/irrigation-and-autocracy-2wukbtz37q.pdf

Irrigation and autocracy

This is the first study to present a unified quantitative account of African commodity trade in the long 19th century from the zenith of the Atlantic slave trade (1790s) to the eve of World War II (1939). Drawing evidence from a new dataset on export and import prices, volumes, composition and net barter terms of trade for five African regions, we show that Sub-Saharan Africa experienced a terms of trade boom that was comparable to other parts of the ‘global periphery’ from the late 18th century up to the mid-1880s, with an exceptionally sharp price boom in the four decades before the Berlin conference (1845-1885). We argue that this commodity price boom changed the economic context in favor of a European scramble for Africa. We also show that the accelerated export growth after the establishment of colonial rule deepened Africa’s specialization in primary commodities, even though the terms of trade turned into a prolonged decline after 1885.

An Economic Rationale for the African Scramble. The Commercial Transition and the Commodity Price Boom of 1845-1885. NBER Working Paper 21213

Jeffrey G. Williamson, Trade and poverty: When the third world fell behind, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 2011, xii+301 pp., U$35 (hardcover), ISBN 978-0-262-01515-8. The global trade boom that lasted ...

Trade and poverty: When the third world fell behind

Openness to trade promotes economic growth and reduces poverty. In terms of its impact on welfare policies it has been said on the hand to reduced social spending, and on the other hand it has been ...

Open for Welfare : Openness to Trade and Social Spending in the West, 1920–1990

The Swedish financial market changed radically during the Second World War. The introduction of a special currency control left the Swedish commercial banks cut off from its traditional trade channels and financial markets. As a consequence, the market structure changed – not least with regard to bank deposits, advances and assets. These changes called for new institutional efforts, i.e. the central bank had to assume an increasingly important role on the Swedish financial market. This development marked a major step towards a larger governmental control over the country’s financial market. The demand for capital traditionally utilized by industry and especially construction was limited during the Second World War. Thus lending from both commercial and savings banks stagnated, while deposits continued to grow. Banks, insurance companies and other financial intermediaries on the Swedish financial market instead became financiers of the growing Swedish national debt. The Swedish economy was dependent on German foreign trade during the Second World War The clearing arrangement between the two countries was originally established by a Swedish initiative in order to force Germany to settle their large debt payments with Sweden. Measured in prices, trade volumes and capital flows, there is little evidence that Germany, as a great power, took advantage of its position in the Swedish-German economic exchange. Instead Sweden in several ways could direct the outcome of the clearing arrangement.

A Financial System under Pressure : The Case of Sweden 1930-45

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/ehr.13053

War and trade in the peaceful century: the impact of interstate wars on bilateral trade flows during the first wave of globalization, 1830–1913†

Bilateral exchange clearing with Germany during the 1930s : the experiences of the Scandinavian countries

Peter Hedberg

Papers

Trade and poverty: When the third world fell behind

Open for Welfare : Openness to Trade and Social Spending in the West, 1920–1990

A Financial System under Pressure : The Case of Sweden 1930-45

War and trade in the peaceful century: the impact of interstate wars on bilateral trade flows during the first wave of globalization, 1830–1913†

Bilateral exchange clearing with Germany during the 1930s : the experiences of the Scandinavian countries