Market-Based Banking and the International Financial Crisis

Economics and political economy lack the analytical tools to explain the differing impact of the recent international financial crisis that erupted in 2007 on developed economies. The principal contribution of this edited volume is to offer a 'market-based banking' framework which transcends the dominant dichotomous understanding of financial systems in terms of credit-based and capital-based. It demonstrates why this dichotomy is obsolete through an appreciation of the activities of banks. Further, it employs 'market-based banking' to overcome the inability of existing typologies to explain financial system change. 'Market-based banking' provides a framework that is more reflective of banking in modern financial systems, and one that provides a more successful explanation of the differential impact of the recent financial crisis. The comparative and single-country chapters in this volume compare the extent of 'market-based banking' across eleven countries, including all of the G7 economies. The chapters also consider the impact of the financial crisis in terms of necessary government support and lending to non-financial companies. The edited volume includes work by authors who are widely respected experts in national political economies, finance, financial regulation, banking, central banking, and monetary policy. This volume is one of the first book-length comparative studies of the financial crisis and its impact and one of the few recent comparative studies of national banking / financial systems in any discipline.

Iain Hardie, Lecturer in International Political Economy, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Edinburgh.,David Howarth, Professor in Political Economy, University of Luxembourg

Iain Hardie is a Lecturer in International Political Economy in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Edinburgh. Prior to embarking on an academic career, Dr Hardie worked in investment banking in London and Hong Kong for over fifteen years, specialising in emerging bond markets. His PhD (2007) and first book examine the links between the financialization of government bond markets and emerging market government policy autonomy. He also works with Professor Donald Mackenzie on the sociology of financial markets.


David Howarth is Professor in Political Economy at the University of Luxembourg. Until September 2012, he was a Jean Monnet Chair at the University of Edinburgh. He has written widely on European political economy topics, specifically EMU, central banking and, more recently national banking systems. In additional to over 70 journal articles and book chapters on these subjects, Professor Howarth has written The French Road to European Monetary Union (Macmillan 2001), The European Central Bank: The New European Leviathan? (Macmillan 2003 and 2005) (with Peter Loedel) and co-edited At the Frontier of the Single European Market: The Political Economy of Market Integration in the Early Twenty-First Century (Routledge 2011). He is a regular contributor to the Economist Intelligence Unit on European political economy topics.