The Geography of Finance

This text shows how theoretical innovations in areas such as endogenous intermediation, together with recent econometric techniques such as co-integration and switching models, can usefully be applied to some of the important questions in the field, such as: what causes spatial credit rationing (or "red-lining")? What effects do nationwide branch-banking systems and decentralized banking systems have? What causes financial centres to develop and their prominence to change over time? The banking systems and financial centres of Canada and Australia are chosen for empirical work, for which a rich set of data, including a new index measure of the importance of a financial centre, are developed.