This paper is one of the two introductory chapters of the book "The German Financial System". It first discusses two issues that have a general bearing on the entire book, and then provides a broad overview of the German financial system.

Since the beginning of the 1990s, it has been widely expected that the implementation of the European Single Market would lead to a rapid convergence of Europe’s financial systems. In the present paper we will show that at least in the period prior to the introduction of the common currency...

The paper presents an empirical analysis of the alleged transformation of the financial systems in the three major European economies, France, Germany and the UK. Based on a unified data set developed on the basis of national accounts statistics, and employing a new and consistent method of...