A Mutation

Abstract

At the end of the 1970s Italy’s financial system exhibited distinctive if not unique structural features. These reflected the country’s economic history and the way the system had been shaped after the war; they were especially evident when viewed as deviations from the pattern of developments in the financial sector in other countries. In two decades of change, they have been attenuated and transcended. This evolution can also be read as progress in the direction taken by the financial systems of the richer countries, if not towards convergence. Considering the initial conditions, it constitutes a veritable mutation; under the impetus of internal and external forces a national financial system inherited from a very particular history gave way to a new system with markedly different institutional structures.