The relationship of companies in the maritime economy to banks has been neglected by researchers. While this is surprising, specific financing techniques in ship financing can be found. In addition, the topic has a high degree of currency: the relationship of shipping companies and shipyards to...

The history of the German cooperative banks has enjoyed renewed attention in recent years. This applies specifically to the current central cooperative bank, DZ BANK, whose origin lies in the Prussian Central Cooperative Bank ("Preußenkasse") founded in 1895. What previous research has in...

Cooperatively-owned Raiffeisen banks first emerged in the Netherlands in the late 1890s and spread rapidly across the country. Using a new dataset, we investigate the determinants of their market entry and early performance. We find that the cooperative organisational form, when allied to a...

Large universal banks played a major role for Germany's industrialisation because they provided loans to the industry and thereby helped firms to overcome liquidity constraints. Previous research has also argued that they were equally important on the German stock market. The present paper...

Johann Heinrich von Thünen förderte die Kreditvermittlung, indem er zum Sparen auf seinem Gut anregte und eine Theorie über die Einführung eines Kreditvereins in Mecklenburg entwickelte. Im Jahr 1817 beschrieb er, daß ein Finanzintermediär nur dann vorteilhaft ist, wenn der dadurch...

First established during the 1830's, the Enskilda banks were characterized by unlimited owner liability and the right to issue bank notes. Consequently, in Swedish banking history, these banks have been considered to be primitive relics. This paper utilizes new data to revise this picture of the...

Contrary to received wisdom, some recent studies report a negative relationship between leverage and profitability in banking in the 1980s and early 1990s. This study presents new data on the leverage and profitability of Swedish commercial banks in 1870-2001, and explores the sign of the...

The working of the asset currency provided by the Swedish note banking system in 1878-1901 is described. Natural and institutional conditions caused the demand for currency to peak in March and September, with troughs in July and January. The paper investigates how the Enskilda banks provided...

Complementarity of money mean that two or more kinds of monies together fulfil the demand of the users better than they would without the existence of the other(-s). In this paper we study complementarity between paper monies in Sweden. We address four questions: 1) What was used as money on a...

Contemporaries and historians have highlighted London’s position asthe world’s leading financial centre, and its dominance of both tradefinancing and international capital investment at this time. The cur-rent historical literature focuses on the presence of the London StockExchange and...