This article uses aggregate bank balance sheet data to investigate systematic differences in the financial makeup and activities of universal and specialised banks over the decades leading up to World War One. The results show that British and German banks structured assets similarly, but German...

Based on daily prices (amtliche Kurse) we estimate effective spreads of securities traded at the Berlin Stock Exchange in 1880, 1890, 1900 and 1910. Several extensions of the Roll measure are applied. We find surprisingly tight effective spreads for the historical data, comparable with similar...