The City of London as an International Commercial and Financial Center since 1900

Abstract

The relative importance of financial services in national economies varied over the course of the twentieth century. Rajan and Zingales note that “by most measures, countries were more financially developed in 1913 than in 1980 and only recently have they surpassed their 1913 levels” and that “indicators of financial development fell in all countries after 1929, reaching their nadir around 1980. Since then has been a revival of financial markets.” This revival of financial markets over the last thirty years has led to the study of “financialization” that is variously defined with differing uses, but here is understood as “the growing importance of financial markets as a source of profits in the economy.”