Finance: Research, Policy and Anecdotes

European banking is still in turmoil, with the Italian banking crisis looming large as a first test for the relatively new banking union. But beyond these short-term risks, there are longer-term trends: the European banking landscape has profoundly changed over the last decade, partly driven by the regulatory response to the 2007-2008 global financial crisis and subsequent sovereign debt crisis in the Eurozone.

With this as background, my colleague Barbara Casu and I edited the Palgrave Handbook of European Banking, just published, which aims to offer a broad overview of key issues in European banking, taking stock of its performance after the recent crises and looking forward to challenges ahead. The topics vary from ownership structure, bank competition, innovation to regulation and banking union.  We also included five country-specific chapters on the banking systems in Germany, Italy, Spain, UK, France and Central and Eastern Europe.   The list of authors speaks for itself; all of them have an impressive track record in the literature on banking in general and European banking topics more specifically.   While the hardcover price might seem high, an electronic version will be available soon for a much more reasonable price. 

Overview