Technical advances in retail banking have had profound repercussions for the competitiveness of individual firms and for the sector as a whole. This paper looks at the role played by new technological resources within the context of organizational change and the products and services offered by...

The present financial crisis has severely hit the Spanish savings banks sector. Of 45 savings banks in 2007 by the end of 2012 the number had dropped to only thirteen. Most of the institutions that have disappeared, have been consolidated into major groups, either by outright purchase by banks...

This paper examines, from a historical perspective, the gradual entrance into the market of mutual and not for profit banks (specifically cooperative banks and savings banks), their continually increasing competitiveness with traded banks in France, Italy and Spain. In all three countries, these...

During the previous three decades, mutual financial firms have been experiencing a process of demutualization, and some of the non-for-profit banks have become publicly listed companies. Hence, the persistence of the Spanish Savings Banks constitutes an interesting case study. In line with...

This paper provides empirical evidence on the behaviour of non-remunerated central bank retail deposits—an analogous deposit facility to retail CBDC—during a bank run in a regime of uninsured bank deposits. I study the 1931 bank run in Spain, following the sudden proclamation of the Second...

In this paper, we analyze the role bank capital played in systemic banking crises and in lending expansion and contraction for nearly 150 years in Spain. We first build a measure of capital ratio (i.e., the capital to assets ratio) for Spain's banking sector, starting in 1880. Then, we analyze...

This paper contributes to the literature on moral hazard, lending of last resort and the political origins of banking crises. Drawing on newly accessed quantitative and qualitative archival sources the paper documents how a bank-Banco de Cataluña-formed a coalition with the Dictatorship of...