The UK financial system, now in its fifth edition, provides an up-to-date discussion of the UK financial system and the changes affecting it. Throughout the world the nature and regulation of financial systems have changed dramatically following the global financial crisis. In this text the necessary underlying theory is introduced and a range of relevant statistics provided in each chapter to supplement the narrative. Coverage includes a critique of the UK financial institutions and markets, as well as regulation emanating both from within the UK and also from supranational bodies such as the Bank for International Settlements and the European Union. The discussion is based on both the underlying theory as well as the operating practices of the institutions and markets. Each supplemented by a comprehensive glossary, the book is subdivided into three main sections: financial institutions; financial markets; and the regulation of banks and other financial institutions. The book will be essential reading to lecturers and undergraduate students enrolled on courses in financial economics and banking.

Featuring primary documents drawn from the Victorian era's business and periodical press, this anthology provides an introduction to the most important features of the financial system in nineteenth-century Britain. Topics covered include currency and credit instruments; the national debt and the stock exchange; banks and the banking system; and the money market, company law, and financial fraud. The documents represent a variety of perspectives, including working-class radicals' complaints about the burden the national debt imposed on the poor, Indian economists' warnings about how debt was impoverishing India, political economists' celebrations of "magic" capital, and satirists' exposures of the frauds perpetrated by nefarious swindlers and company promoters. Most of the selections are reproduced in their entirety so that readers can see how closely financial matters were intertwined with the politics, ethics, and literary concerns of the period. An introduction by the editor and a chronology of the British financial system help place the materials in their historical context. Ideal for courses in Victorian literature, culture, and history, The Financial System in Nineteenth-Century Britain will also interest general readers who have been puzzled by references to financial matters in writings of the period. This unique collection reveals how England rose to a position of international financial supremacy and how writing about finance both monitored and supported that triumph.

Collectively, mankind has never had it so good despite periodic economic crises of which the current sub-prime crisis is merely the latest example. Much of this success is attributable to the increasing efficiency of the world's financial institutions as finance has proved to be one of the most important causal factors in economic performance. In a series of insightful essays, financial and economic historians examine how financial innovations from the seventeenth century to the present have continually challenged established institutional arrangements, forcing change and adaptation by governments, financial intermediaries, and financial markets. Where these have been successful, wealth creation and growth have followed. When they failed, growth slowed and sometimes economic decline has followed. These essays illustrate the difficulties of co-ordinating financial innovations in order to sustain their benefits for the wider economy, a theme that will be of interest to policy makers as well as economic historians.

This authoritative guide to the transformation of the Bank of England into a modern inflation-targeting independent central bank examines a revolution in monetary and economic policy and the modernization of British institutions in the late twentieth century.

Based on detailed research and consultation with experts, including the Bank of England, this book reviews theoretical and historical debates on the nature of money and banking and explains the role of the central bank, the Government and the European Union. Following a sell out first edition and reprint, this second edition includes new sections on Libor and quantitative easing in the UK and the sovereign debt crisis in Europe.