Changing Europe

Tula Weis, Senior Editor for Palgrave Macmillan's scholarly and professional Finance list, writes about the changing landscape of European banking and regulation post-crisis.

Eight years ago, Greece started a domino effect that triggered five sovereign debt crises in the Eurozone, later referred to collectively as the European debt crisis. Since then, the banking and regulatory landscape in Europe has been irreversibly changed, with banks looking toward adjusted business models for profitability. Those aftershocks are still reverberating.

As with all change, academic research is at the forefront, where scholars and researchers grapple with why, and then look to the how. And while the path to financial stability has not always been paved in gold (or any other commodity, for that matter), our authors are providing needed and necessary resources to help aid the recovery. Palgrave’s recently released Handbook of European Banking, expertly edited by Thorsten Beck and Barbara Casu, collates the expertise and research of leading academic and senior policy makers in the field of European banking and outlines crucial regulatory changes aimed at fostering financial stability in Europe.  

Author Giuseppe Boccuzzi examines the numerous changes happening to European legislations for the prevention and management of banking crises, focusing on a new framework for banking crisis management in The European Banking Union. And while regulations are certainly needed, Katarzyna Sum addresses both the opportunities and drawbacks of post-crisis financial regulation, and investigates whether the solutions adequately defuse the problems within the EU’s banking sector in her book, Post-Crisis Banking Regulation in the European Union. Regulations aside, authors Elena Beccalli and Federica Poli in Bank Risk, Governance and Regulation conduct analysis to answer the ongoing question: which banking strategies are actually feasible?

It remains to be seen whether the banking regulations born from the Euro crisis will act only as a temporary band aid or a long-lasting solution. Either way, there is certainly more scholarship to be done, and I am always interested in discussing new ideas. Feel free to reach me at tula.weis@palgrave-usa.com.