Financial innovations and crises: the view backwards from Northern Rock / Jeremy Atack -- An economic explanation of the early Bank of Amsterdam, debasement, bills of exchange and the emergence of the first central bank / Stephen Quinn and William Roberds -- With a view to hold: the emergence of...

This survey reviews the literature on the political economy of financial structure, broadly defined to include the size of capital markets and banking systems as well as the distribution of access to external finance across firms.The theoretical literature on the institutional basis for...