Names, shares and mortgages: the formalisation of Swedish commercial bank lending, 1870–1938

Oskar Broberg and Anders Ögren

Financial History Review, 2019, vol. 26, issue 1, 81-108

Abstract: This article explores the process of the formalisation of the Swedish financial market, through an analysis of commercial bank lending in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The analysis shows that the incorporation of Swedish business around the turn of the century led to a shift from lending primarily backed by name security to an increased use of mortgage and shares as collateral – after the severe stock market crash in 1920/1 mortgage lending surpassed lending against shares as collateral. We interpret this change as an important part of the formalisation process of the financial system, as it standardised the valuation process and allowed creditors to exit on a secondary market. Our statistical testing points to increased financial wealth and liquidity represented by the broad money supply, plus population growth and urbanisation, as important forces behind this formalisation.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:fihrev:v:26:y:2019:i:01:p:81-108_00

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Financial History Review from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().