London And Paris As International Financial Centres In The Twentieth Century

London and Paris, the world's two leading financial centers in the nineteenth century, experienced differing fortunes during the twentieth century. While London remained an international financial center, Paris' influence declined. Yet over the last twenty years deregulation, internationalization, and the advent of the single currency have reactivated their competition in ways reminiscent of their old rivalry before the First World War. This book provides a long-term perspective on the development of each centre, with special attention devoted to the pre-1914 years and to the last decades of the twentieth century, in order to contrast these two eras of globalization.

Youssef Cassis is Professor of Contemporary Economic History, University of Grenoble II, and Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is author of Big Business: The European Experience in the 20th Century (OUP, 1997), and co-editor of European Banks and the American Challenge: Competition and Cooperation in International Banking Under Bretton Woods (OUP, 2002), with Stefano Battilossi. Eric Bussiere is Jean Monnet Professor of European Construction at the University of Paris IV-Sorbonne. He is the author of Horace Finaly, Banquier (Paris, Fayard, 1996), and editor of Georges Pompidou et la Mutation Economique de l'Occident (Paris, PUF, 2003).