Banking in Crisis: The Rise and Fall of British Banking Stability, 1800 to the Present

Can the lessons of the past help us to prevent another banking collapse in the future? This is the first book to tell the story of the rise and fall of British banking stability in the past two centuries, and it sheds new light on why banking systems crash and the factors underpinning banking stability. John Turner shows that there were only two major banking crises in Britain during this time: the crisis of 1825–6 and the Great Crash of 2007–8. Although there were episodic bouts of instability in the interim, the banking system was crisis-free. Why was the British banking system stable for such a long time and why did the British banking system implode in 2008? In answering these questions, the book explores the long-run evolution of bank regulation, the role of the Bank of England, bank rescues and the need to hold shareholders to account.

An Empirical Analysis of Scale and Scope Economies and Technical Change in an Irish Multiproduct Banking Firm

In contrast to most empirical investigations of the efficiency of multiproduct financial institutions, which either estimate scale and scope economies with a given state of technology, or only analyse technical change in the presence of overall scale economies, this study estimates overall scale economies, product-specific scale economies and scope economies in the presence of both neutral and non-neutral technical change. Also, in contrast to most other empirical studies in this area, standard errors are computed for all relevant statistics. The findings indicate diseconomies of scope; overall diseconomies of scale; product-specific economies are decreasing for investments and increasing for loans; in addition to substantial neutral technical change, biased technical change is labour- and capital-saving and deposits-using in character.

Information disclosure and depositor discipline in the Chinese banking sector

We investigate the relationship between information disclosure and depositor behaviour in the Chinese banking sector. Specifically, we enquire whether enhanced information disclosure enables investors to more effectively infer a banking institution's risk profile, thereby influencing their deposit decisions. Utilising an unbalanced panel, incorporating financial data from 169 Chinese banks over the 1998–2009 period, we employ generalised-method-of-moments (GMM) estimation procedures to control for potential endogeneity, unobserved heterogeneity, and persistence in the dependent variable. We uncover evidence that: (i) the growth rate of deposits is sensitive to bank fundamentals after controlling for macroeconomic factors, diversity in ownership structure, and government intervention; (ii) a bank publicly disclosing more transparent information in its financial reports, is more likely to experience growth in its deposit base; and (iii) banks characterised by high information transparency, well-capitalised and adopted international accounting standards, are more able to attract funds by offering higher interest rates.

Right to War in the Islamic Tradition:Jihad and its Compatibility with Modern International Law (will be submitted to the publisher in April 2014)

In the last century, Islam drew the world’s attention though such phenomena as the Islamic revolution in Iran, the fierce Muslim resistance against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the assassination of Egypt’s President Sadat by a radical Islamic group. But it was when Osama Bin Laden and his organization Al Qaeda were established to have been behind the 11 September attacks in the US, the age-old images of Islam, the fanatical and belligerent religion threatening what the Western world stands for, were revitalized. The impact of 9/11 attacks was so great that even balanced portrayals of Islam were eclipsed by stereotypical images of a fundamental, anti-Western and warmongering religion that bore the hallmarks of medieval prejudices and rhetoric. The popular image tailored for the Western audience reflected Islam as monolithic, intrinsically aggressive, and determined to engage in religious wars against the interests and values of the Western civilisation.
This book intends to help reduce, at least to a reasonable degree, the impact of sweeping, and at times tendentious, generalisations about Islamic laws of warfare. The main purpose of this book is to place the legal, cultural and historical practices of Islamic wars in their broader socio-political contexts, thereby establishing that there has been no undisputed understanding of what defensive or aggressive warfare entails in Islam, whether in doctrine or in practice.

Raiffeisenism abroad: why did German cooperative banking fail in Ireland but prosper in the Netherlands?

Why did imitations of Raiffeisen’s rural cooperative savings and loans associations work well in some European countries, but fail in others? This article considers the example of Raiffeisenism in Ireland and in the Netherlands. Raiffeisen banks arrived in both places at the same time, but had drastically different fates. In Ireland they were almost wiped out by the early 1920s, while in the Netherlands they proved to be a long-lasting institutional transplant. Raiffeisen banks were successful in the Netherlands because they operated in niche markets with few competitors, while rural financial markets in Ireland were unsegmented and populated by long- established incumbents, leaving little room for new players, whatever their institu- tional advantages. Dutch Raiffeisen banks were largely self-financing, closely integrated into the wider rural economy, and able to take advantage of economic and religious divisions in rural society. Their Irish counterparts were not.

Banking compliance and dependence corruption: towards an attachment perspective

Why did banking compliance fail so badly in the recent financial crisis and why, according to many, does it continue to do so? Rather than point to the lack of oversight of individuals in bank compliance roles, as many commentators do, in this paper I examine in depth the organizational context that surrounded people in such roles. I focus on those compliance personnel who did speak out about risky practices in their banks, who were forced to escalate the problem and 'whistle-blow' to external parties, and who were punished for doing so. Drawing on recent empirical data from a wider study, I argue that the concept of dependence corruption is useful in this setting, and that it can be extended to encompass interpersonal attachments. This, in turn, problematises the concept of dependence corruption because interpersonal attachments in organisational settings are inevitable. The paper engages with recent debates on whether institutional corruption is an appropriate lens for studying private-sector organisations by arguing for a focus on roles, rather than remaining at the level of institutional fields or individual organisations. Finally, the paper contributes to studies on banking compliance in the context of the recent crisis; without a deeper understanding of those who were forced to extremes to simply do their jobs, reform of the banking sector will prove difficult.

Islamic fundamentalism since 1945:2nd revised and expanded edition

Featuring a brand new examination of Islamic fundamentalism in the wake of the Arab Spring, this fully revised and updated second edition of Islamic Fundamentalism since 1945 analyzes the roots and emergence of Islamic movements in the modern world and the main thinkers that inspired them.

Providing a much-needed historical overview of a fast-changing socio-political landscape, the main facets of Islamic fundamentalism are put in a global context, with a thematic debate of issues such as:

- the effects of colonialism on Islam

- secularism and the Islamic reaction

- Islam and violence in the 9/11 era

- globalization and transnational Islamist movements

- Islam in the wake of the Arab Awakening

Islamic Fundamentalism since 1945 provides an authoritative account of the causes and diversity of Islamic fundamentalism, a modern phenomenon which has grabbed the headlines as a grave threat to the West and a potentially revolutionary trend in the Middle East. It is a valuable resource for students and those interested in the history, effects and consequences of these Islamic movements

Holding Shareholders to Account: British Banking Stability and Contingent Capital

This chapter seeks to explain the relative stability of the British banking system in terms of its capital structure. From 1826 joint-stock banking was allowed, but shareholder liability was jointly and severally unlimited. Limited liability banks were allowed from 1857–8, but these banks issued partly paid shares with an obligation on shareholders to subscribe for uncalled capital. Contingent capital meant that shareholders and managers would suffer losses in the event of failure and this discouraged risk shifting at the expense of note-holders and depositors. Although individual banks collapsed, the failure rate of banks (in terms of number or capital) did not reach a critical level—10 per cent—beyond which the payments system might have been threatened. This chapter argues that agency problems and systemic risk rose after the abolition of contingent share capital in 1958 and the deregulation of the banking sector in the 1970s.