EH.N: CfP: XIII Congress of the IEHA: Savings Banks as Financial Intermediaries: Role, Performance and Impact

posted by Duncan Ross on August 13, 2001

This is a call for papers for a session to be held at the XIII Congress
of the International Economic History Association, Buenos Aires,
July 22-26, 2002. This session is being organised by Duncan Ross
and Paul Thomes and proposals may be submitted to either.

Savings banks have performed a wide variety of functions and roles
since they spread across Europe and North America from the late
eighteenth century. Primarily serving as savings vehicles for the
less well off, they complemented the activities of commercial
banking systems by focussing on deposit gathering rather than
lending. The extent to which they could develop this latter aspect of
their business was generally constrained by domestic regulation: in
the UK for example, savings banks made very few personal or
business loans until well into the twentieth century. In other
countries, they acted primarily as mortgage or municipal financing
vehicles, or, as in Germany for example, by bringing together
aspects of commercial banking with savings gathering in a new and
innovative manner. In the process of financial deregulation in the
late twentieth century, these differences within and between
countries have been eroded;savings banks have become in some
places fully fledged financial intermediaries, but in others they have
retained some of their special characteristics.

This session seeks to explore these issues: it will take an
explicitly inclusive and comparative approach to the role,
performance and impact of savings banks in the process of
economic and financial development. There are three main
principles. First, we will take a long-term perspective, so
that papers on recent (e.g. post deregulation and merger
performance) activities will be as welcome as those dealing with
earlier savings gathering activities in Europe, North America or
elsewhere. It is hoped that this will encourage a range of
approaches, including involvement from scholars in cognate
disciplines who are interested in these institutions.
Secondly, the organisers seek to encourage analysis not only of
the institutions, but also of their customers; that is, we wish to
explore savings activity and the contribution of savings banks to
savings behaviour in those countries in which they developed.
Third, we seek to place savings banks in the context of their host
financial system and in this way be able to say something about
the changing nature and identity of the savings bank as a form of
organisation separate and distinct from commercial banks. The
relationship between savings and commercial banks, the points at
which they meet and the arenas in which they compete, will be
explored.

  Dr Duncan M Ross, Department of Economic and Social History
  University of Glasgow, 4 University Gardens, Glasgow G12 8QQ
  Scotland, tel +44 (0)141 330 3586, Fax +44 (0)141 330 4889
  email D.Ross@socsci.gla.ac.uk

There will be a pre-conference (subject of an earlier open call for
papers) to be held at the University of Glasgow on 19th-20th
September 2001. Copies of the programme and further details are
available from Duncan Ross at the address above. Additional
submissions for the Buenos Aires session are welcome.

Duncan M Ross
Department of Economic and Social History
University of Glasgow
4 University Gardens
Glasgow G12 8QQ


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