Programme

1. Introduction (2 hours)
1.1 Premises for a comparative study
1.2 Forms of fund channelling
1.3 Classification of financial systems
1.4 Changes in today’s financial systems

2. The Historical Development of Financial Systems (2 hours)
2.1 The first stages of financial systems
2.2 Credit vs mutual aid
2.3 Early Financial Systems
2.5 The birth of modern financial systems

3 Market-oriented Systems (8 hours)
3.1 The UK financial system
3.1.1 Banks in the UK
3.1.2 Building societies
3.1.3 Insurance companies
3.1.4 Pension funds
3.1.5 Unit trusts
3.1.6 Investment trusts

3.2 The US financial system
3.2.1 Deposit-taking institutions
3.2.2 The Federal Reserve System
3.2.3 Non-depository institutions


4. Bank-oriented Systems (14 hours)
4.1 The German financial system
4.1.1 Banks and other deposit-taking institutions
4.1.2 Non-deposit institutions
4.1.3 The use of bond and equity markets in Germany

4.2 The French financial system
4.2.1 The French banking system
4.2.2 Specialist and non-deposit institutions
4.2.3 Financial markets in France

4.3. The Italian financial system
4.3.1 The development of the Italian financial system
4.3.2 The current position of the Italian financial system 141

4.4. Financial systems in Northern Europe
4.4.1 Banking systems in the Nordic countries
4.4.2 Other financial intermediaries in the Nordic countries
4.4.3 The evolution and integration of financial systems in Scandinavia
4.4.4 Monetary policy strategies in the Nordic countries

4.5. The Eurozone and the Banking Union
4.5. The Japanese financial system

5. Other kinds of financial systems (8 hours)
5.1 China’s banking and financial markets
5.2 The Russian banking and financial system
5.3 Islamic finance
5.4 African financial system: an overview

6. Follow-up issues (26 hours)
6.1. Intertemporal smoothing
6.2. Information and resource allocation
6.3. The Limitations of Markets: The Classical View
6.4. Corporate Governance
6.5. Competition in banking
6.6. Self-financing firms
6.7. Corporate savings
6.8. Bubbles and financial crises
6.9. Liquidity in asset markets and market crashes

Core Documentation

Bain K., Howells P., The Economics of Money, Banking and Finance. A European Text, Pearson Education, 2008

Allen F., Gale D, Comparing Financial Systems, MIT Press, 2000.

Type of delivery of the course

Lessons in classroom and on line

Type of evaluation

The final test involves 7 multiple choice questions and 3 open-ended questions. The multiple-choice questions are on all the topics of the course. The open-ended questions will be pull out from a list of questions previously published on the web site of the course. Each right answer to a multiple-choice question is worth 3 points. Each answer to an open question is evaluated from 0 to 6 points.