High Performance Financial Systems

Book excerpt: This study outlines the framework of high performance financial systems and the parameters for financial firms operating in them. It begins with an intuitive structural model of financial intermediation, and then considers issues facing players in, and users of the financial system, with emphasis on strategic positioning alternatives facing banks and other types of financial institutions, and the principal determinants of their competitive performance. This volume also deals with a critical and controversial dimension in the design of the financial system, the relationship between the structure of financial institutions, and the linkages to ownership and the control process in industry. Using Singapore as a case study, the final two sections apply the lessons of the economics of financial system performance to the battle among financial centres.