Individual financial systems can be understood as very specific configurations of certain key elements. Often these configurations remain unchanged for decades. We hypothesize that there is a specific relationship between key elements, namely that of complementarity. Thus, complementarity seems...

A widely recognized paper by Colin Mayer (1988) has led to a profound revision of academic thinking about financing patterns of corporations in different countries. Using flow-of-funds data instead of balance sheet data, Mayer and others who followed his lead found that internal financing is the...