THE ROLE OF FINANCIAL RELATIONSHIPS IN THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN CORPORATE FINANCE
THE ROLE OF FINANCIAL RELATIONSHIPS IN THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN CORPORATE FINANCE
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财务关系在美国公司金融史上的作用
DOI：
10.1111/j.1745-6622.1996.tb00115.x
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发表时间：
1996
影响因子：
0.9
通讯作者：
Carlos D. Ramirez
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
C. Calomiris;Carlos D. Ramirez
美国的企业融资体系与其他大多数国家不同，它并不是围绕着一系列为客户履行各种职能的“全能银行”而组织起来的。事实上，美国金融史的显著特征是金融中介机构的数量和种类，以及它们与公司（以及彼此之间）的关系。除了商业银行之外，还有投资银行、保险公司、风险资本家、商业票据交易商、共同基金和许多其他机构。这种中介机构的经济作用是减少市场摩擦，如“信息不对称”和“代理问题”，否则会提高美国公司的外部资本成本。
本文认为，不断变化的菜单，这些中介机构和他们的网络背后的美国公司融资的演变的驱动力。美国的金融史被视为一系列制度和金融创新，其设计在很大程度上是为了解决对关系的昂贵限制，特别是对美国银行规模和范围的限制，而这些限制在大多数其他国家都不存在。美国金融体系在降低企业融资的信息和控制成本方面取得了成功，在这方面，美国金融体系的历史既有重大进步的时期，也有重大逆转的时期。三个相对成功的时期--19世纪初的新英格兰、20世纪20年代“初期”的全能银行和现代金融资本主义--被金融关系菜单急剧减少的时期--特别是大萧条及其20年后果--所分隔。
除了优先股等新的金融债权和风险资本家等新的中介机构之外，另一个重要的创新是中介机构之间的新合作形式--特别是银行、风险资本家、信托、养老金和投资银行之间的合作--这使得美国金融体系能够提供全能银行体系的一些关键优势。今天，美国一些最大的商业银行可以被视为在这些新的中介机构联盟中发挥核心协调作用。这样一来，它们可能会成为一个独特的美国全能银行体系的平台。
The American corporate financing system, unlike that of most other countries, has not been organized around a set of “universal banks” that perform a variety of functions for their clients. Indeed, the distinguishing feature of American financial history is the number and variety of financial intermediaries, and their relationships with corporations (and one another). Besides commercial banks, there are investment banks, insurance companies, venture capitalists, commercial paper dealers, mutual funds, and many others. The economic role of such intermediaries is to reduce market frictions such as “asymmetric information” and “agency problems” that otherwise raise the cost of outside capital for U.S. companies.
This article views the changing menu of such intermediaries and their networks as the driving force behind the evolution of American corporate finance. U.S. financial history is seen as a series of institutional and financial innovations designed in large part to work around costly restrictions on relationships–particularly, limits on the scale and scope of U.S. banks–that do not exist in most other countries. In terms of its success in reducing the information and control costs of corporate finance, the history of the American financial system includes periods of significant progress as well as major reversals. Three relatively successful periods– the early 19th-century in New England, the “incipient” universal banking of the 1920s, and modernday financial capitalism–are separated by periods of drastic reductions in the menu of financial relationships– particularly the Great Depression and its 20-year aftermath.
Besides new financial claims like preferred stock and new intermediaries such as venture capitalists, another important innovation is new forms of cooperation among intermediaries– especially among banks, venture capitalists, trusts, pensions, and investment banks–that have enabled the U.S. financial system to provide some of the key advantages of universal banking systems. Some of the largest U.S. commercial banks today can be viewed as positioning themselves to play a central coordinating role in these new coalitions of intermediaries. In so doing, they may become the platform for a distinctively American universal banking system.