Financial products are unstandardized and subject to a great deal of uncertainty. They tend to concentrate geographically because of the reduction in information costs resulting from close contacts. Concentration leads to economies of scale and encourages external economies. Great financial centers enjoy a high degree of persistence but are not immune from decline and eventual demise. Yet, their achievements are passed along in a an evolutionary manner. In revisiting the;historical record of seven international financial centers -Florence, Venice, Genoa, Antwerp, Amsterdam, London and New York_ the paper finds evidence of a long evolutionary chain of banking and finance. As to the present and the future, the forces of integration are likely to give an additional boost to the persistence of international financial centers.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Universita' Politecnica delle Marche (I), Dipartimento di Economia in its series Working Papers with number
303.
Find related papers by JEL classification: G15 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - International Financial Markets G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Mortgages H63 - Public Economics - - National Budget, Deficit, and Debt - - - Debt; Debt Management N20 - Economic History - - Financial Markets and Institutions - - - General, International, or Comparative
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: