It is almost universally agreed that banks are of central importance for economic growth, the efficient allocation of capital, financial stability, and the competitiveness and development of manufacturing and service sectors. And, at least in recent decades, it has also widely been believed that high-performing banks, supported by state-of-the-art risk-management capabilities, and light-touch, market-based regulation would allow plentiful finance for investment, leading to economic growth. However, since 2007, as the global financial system has endured extreme turbulence—with banks suffering stomach-churning losses, necessitating unbelievable bailouts by national governments—this orthodoxy has been roundly challenged. Academics and policymakers alike have been forced fundamentally to re-examine the scale, scope, governance, performance, as well as the safety and soundness, of financial institutions.

The necessity for such urgent reassessments underscores the timeliness of this new Major Work collection from Routledge. It meets the need for an authoritative reference work to map the existing scholarly corpus, and to make sense of the continuing explosion in research output. Edited by John O. S. Wilson, a leading scholar, Banking is a five-volume collection which brings together the very best foundational and cutting-edge contributions to the field.

The collection is divided into four principal parts. Part 1 is dedicated to ‘The Theory and Business of Banking’. The second part deals with ‘The Industrial Organization of Banking’, while Part 3 explores ‘Deregulation, Regulation, Supervision, and Crises’. The final part of the collection brings together the best scholarship and other useful materials on ‘Banks and the Macro economy’.

The collection is fully indexed. It also includes comprehensive introductions and overviews to each principal part, newly written by the editor, which place the material in its intellectual and historical context. It is an essential work of reference and is destined to be valued by users as a vital one-stop research resource.