Daniel Verdier – författare

In this ambitious exploration of how foreign trade policy is made in democratic regimes, Daniel Verdier shows that special interests, party ideologues, and state officials and diplomats act as agents of the voters. Constructing a general theory in which existing theories (rent-seeking, median voting, state autonomy) function as partial explanations, he shows that trade institutions are not fixed entities but products of political competition.

Since the nineteenth century, there has been an accepted distinction between financial systems that separate commercial and investment banking and those that do not. This comprehensive collection aims to establish how and why financial systems develop, and how knowledge of financial differentiation in the nineteenth century may afford insight into the development of contemporary banking structure.

This book poses a systematic challenge to Alexander Gerschenkron''s 1950s thesis on universal banks. With contributions from leading scholars such as Ranald Michie and Jaime Reis, this well written book provides solid and intriguing arguments throughout.