Incluye referencias bibliográficas (páginas 507-548) e índice.

Fragile by design : the political origins of banking crises and scarce credit Section one: No banks without states, and no states without banks: 1. No banks without states, and no states without banks -- If stable and efficient banks are such a good idea, why are they so rare? ; 2. The game of bank bargains ; 3. Tools of conquest and survival: why states need banks ; 4. Privileges with burdens: war, empire, and the monopoly structure of English banking ; 5. Banks and democracy: Britain in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries -- Section two. The cost of banker-populist alliances: the United States versus Canada: 6. Crippled by populism: U.S. banking from colonial times to 1990 ; 7. The new U.S. bank bargain: megabanks, urban activists, and the erosion of mortgage standards ; 8. Leverage, regulatory failure, and the subprime crisis ; 9. Durable partners: politics and banking in Canada -- Section three. Authoritarianism, democratic transitions, and the game of bank bargains: 10. Mexico: chaos makes cronyism look good ; 11. When autocracy fails: banking and politics in Mexico since 1982 ; 13. Inflation machines: banking and state finance in imperial Brazil ; 13. The democratic consequences of inflation-tax banking in Brazil -- Section four. Going beyond structural narratives: 14. Traveling to other places: is our sample representative? ; 15. Reality is a plague on many houses.