Beschreibung:
This paper explores the secular tradition of public banking in Southern Italy, focusing in particular on the nineteenth century. In its long history, Southern public banking took different forms, characterised by different degrees of centralisation, of control exercised by local or state authorities and the involvement of civil society according to a model of stakeholder banking. Over the centuries, public banking played a crucial role in stabilising and integrating monetary markets and supporting public finances. It also provided credit to the private economy and helped combat usury. In this regard, however, its record is more mixed, especially as regards the first half of the nineteenth century. In those decades, the Bourbons came to manage a powerful, state-owned banking system which, by prioritising fiscal stability, proved dramatically unable to foster credit and economic development. This changed after the unification of Italy. The market was liberalised, public banking was reformed and exposed to the direct competition of private banks. By relying on both private and public banking, the Italian government was able to extract within a novel fiscal framework even more resources than the Bourbons from public banking alone and at the same time foster credit provision to the private sector. Competition made public banks more efficient than under the Bourbons but it did not eliminate problems of governance typical of public enterprises. Moreover, public banking transformed into a pawn of regional party politics. It also complicated the drafting of a coherent banking legislation at national level and contributed to the slower development of private financial markets in the South. If there is a lesson to be learnt from the history of Southern public banking, it is this: that its performance benefits significantly from exposure to private competition and that it depends less on its being "public" than on the specific character it takes in a given historical context