UNITED STATES AND CANADA U.S. Bank Deregulation in Historical Perspective. By Charles W. Calomiris. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. xxxii, 359. $54.95

Deregulation of banking in the United States during the past two decades is beginning to make American banking resemble that of other advanced countries. Banks are now free to operate nationwide branch systems, to combine commercial banking with investment banking and securities brokerage, and to offer insurance and other products previously restricted or prohibited. A generation ago banks could do none of these things. In this meaty collection of six essays (three with co-authors) previously published in different places during the 1990s, Charles Calomiris asks and provides answers to a number of questions concerning U.S. banking history and bank regulation. How and why did American banking become so uniquely different from banking in other countries? Why was the U.S. banking system more prone than those of other countries to banking panics and other types of financial disturbance? What were the effects of these differences on financial and economic efficiency? Why did a banking system so greatly regulated for more than a century by state and federal authorities become so greatly deregulated at the end of the twentieth century? Will there be still more deregulation as a new century begins? In the years ahead, how competitive will U.S. banks be in the increasingly global financial markets?