Reviews for The Oxford Handbook of Banking

The average rating for The Oxford Handbook of Banking based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-03-26 00:00:00 James Williams This book is a bit hit and miss. It is less a book and more a compilation of academic essays on banking. For the record, I work in a bank so I know a little bit about what they're talking about. The book is at its best when its talking about banking innovations such as securitization, which it manages to explain in a coherent manner. Mortgage backed securities bundled together in a special purpose vehicle, securities repackaged into tranches with the most risky part (equity tranche) bought by the bank. So far so solid. It is a little worse when talking about banking regulation. This is a fast changing area, my edition is behind the curve (the 1st edition is around 2009, Basel III has greatly changed the landscape since then). And finally, some of the comparative banking essays and ethical essays are almost unreadable. The number of academics referenced in the one on Japan made reading it almost like reading a Biblical genealogy. One almost imagines they get paid a bonus to reference every one of their friends. Consequently, the entire thrust of the article was lost- in relation to reasons behind the Japan crash the Plaza Accords agreement and property bubble got hardly a mention and there was a mention that perhaps the de-regulation in 80's Japan did not proceed fast enough. Seriously, how could you even suggest that after the company endured nearly two decades of lost growth after deregulation? The ethics on regulation essay adopts an awful axiom based style which should never ever be used outside of mathematics. Blind assertions are dressed up as logical axioms, the essay is written in an academic style with zero focus on the practicalities of implications. I would prefer to read of the mystical emanations in Plotinus' Enneads as his ideas may have more application to reality. One comes away from the book with the feeling that many of the essays written to praise innovations in banking such as the rapid expansion of securitisation were swiftly altered as a result of the financial crash, which may partly explain its lumpiness. Better than many economic books out there, but uneven.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-06-24 00:00:00 Seb Brown I've been reading up on TONS of financial literature lately, and I like this one so far. It's probably dry and boring for the average reader, but for anyone interested in "how Wall St. works" it is very clearly written and presented as a series of questions and answers that make this book easy to jump around by topic and particular point of interest.