This paper surveys the recent empirical literature on emerging stock markets of the last quarter of the 20th century and elaborates on its theoretical insights and empirical methods to design a research agenda on the “emergence†of equity markets in European peripheries before 1913. We...

In a bank-oriented country such as Italy, bank credit is by far the most important source of external finance for firms. The allocative efficiency of banks is therefore an important element underlying the overall performance of the economy. In this paper we focus on allocation across industrial...

What determined the multinational expansion of European banks in the pre-1914 era of globalization? And how were banks’ foreign investments related to other facets of the globalizing world economy such as trade and capital flows? The paper reviews both the contemporary and historical...