Böcker i Finance Matters-serien

A thorough and perspicacious analysis of auantitative easing (QE), what has become a recovery method of last resort, that will be essential reading for anyone wanting to understand central banking's role in the national economy.

The UK business banking sector is unique in the EU in probiding most SME funding via bank overdrafts and credit cards rather than long-term loan finance. This book explores British banks' attitude towards SME finance and the roots of their risk aversion.

This short book sets out the history, development and day-to-day workings of a key institutional pillar of the European Union. It assesses its work, independence, the policies and instruments at its disposal and the evolution of its role during the eurozone crisis of 2010.

Mark Cassell explores the unique entity that is the German public banking system and the lessons it offers to banking systems worldwide.

A critical introduction to the complex world of the credit rating industry: how it works, how it has evolved, the role it played in the financial crisis, and how it is regulated.

An incisive discussion of the development of this class of investor, how they have become legitimate actors in global financial markets, and their role as providers of capital and in economic development at home and abroad.

A clear and rigorous survey of terrorist financing and the international efforts to combat it suitable for a range of courses in international relations, politics and global political economy.

Banks have been at the heart of economic activity for centuries, but since the 2008 financial crisis scrutiny of their activities and regulation of their actions has become the focus of fervent academic, policy and political activity. This focus takes for granted the existence and nature of banks. In Regulating Banks, Andrew Whitworth looks one stage deeper to question what a bank really is, and what the implications of that are. He argues that the institutional form of a bank represents the political compromise of a specific time and place - and can therefore change. This has implications for financial stability. Far from creating stability, he argues, the regulatory impulse of policy-makers inevitably leads to greater financial instability.Whitworth examines the postwar period of UK banking to show how regulation influences the nature of banks as much as their behaviour. Regulation, by changing the nature of what is regulated, encourages banks and other actors over time to alter their behaviour, which leads to future boom and bust cycles. These cycles then require further regulation to rein in the disruption their new pattern of behaviour inevitably instigates.Regulating Banks reveals the cyclical nature of banking regulation, the inherent mismatch between political impulses and market reactions, and the price banks, banking and society pay for such instability.