Currently, foreign banks own the banks that hold about 80 percent of the assets in Mexican banks. The paper argues that this is the third instance in which foreign-owned banks have initially comprised a large part of the Mexican banking system, and that in the first two cases (1865-1910 and...

This essay reviews much of the recent literature on international financial centers from both economics and geography and critiques the thesis of an quot;end of geography.quot; Banks have dispersed from traditional centers those activities involving frequent routine, standardized, and...

Deposit accounts that provide an interest return determined by a lottery have proved to be popular around the world. From the point of view of a bank, these products are especially successful among relatively low-income customers, or in markets in which many people are outside the banking...

We discuss the expansion of Norwegian banks abroad in the post-World War II era. The Norwegian case gives us an opportunity to examine the determinants of the strategies that banks from a small county have followed in their international expansion. At least two issues emerge as important. The...

Banks have been engaging in foreign direct investment (FDI) for over 150 years. In doing so, they have had to deal with the problems of the liability of foreignness, generally without being able to depend on proprietary administrative or physical technology. Foreign direct investment in banking...

Despite the scholarly interest in joint ventures and strategic alliances, the consortium bank movement represents an under-researched phase in post-war banking history. From 1964 to the mid-1980s, many of the largest banks in the world, including the Nordic banks, entered into international...

Lottery-linked deposit accounts have proved to be popular around the world. From the point of view of a bank, these products are especially successful among relatively low-income customers, or in markets in which many people are outside the banking system. Below, we describe numerous examples of...

Since 1995 two Spanish banks -- Banco Santander Central Hispano and Banco Bilbao Vizcaya -- have become the largest foreign banks in retail banking in Latin America. This recent development merits careful analysis because foreign direct investment is rare in retail banking. We find that the...

This paper examines necessary conditions for a demand for new information to exist. In this one-period model, investors are homogeneous, have logarithmic utility, and must decide on information acquisition before trading starts, and without knowing what other investors will do. We examine the...