 Banking integration and (under)development: A quantitative reassessment of the Italian financial divide (1814-74)Maria Stella Chiaruttini No 03-20, IBF Paper Series from IBF – Institut für Bank- und Finanzgeschichte / Institute for Banking and Financial History, Frankfurt am Main Abstract: When in 1860 Southern Italy was annexed to the Kingdom of Italy, it suddenly found itself within a larger national market characterised by high levels of public debt, a new currency and increased competition in banking. Monetary problems, the depreciation of public bonds and the loss of pre-eminence of the Southern public banks to the advantage of the Piedmontese National Bank, the predecessor of the Bank of Italy, are increasingly often taken as evidence of the harmful effects of financial integration on the Southern economy. This paper, focusing on the banking side of the story, argues, on the contrary, that the South benefited significantly from its integration with the North and that the relative underdevelopment of its credit markets was not due to a policy of 'internal financial colonialism' pursued by Northern capitalists with the backing of the Italian state, but to different economic conditions and the long-lasting impact of the poor banking policies implemented under the Bourbons. JEL-codes: E50 F36 G21 G28 N23 P51 (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:ibfpps:0320 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in IBF Paper Series from IBF – Institut für Bank- und Finanzgeschichte / Institute for Banking and Financial History, Frankfurt am Main Contact information at EDIRC. |
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