Why were banking sectors in ‘liberal’ and ‘coordinated’ market economies with similar financial systems, operating under the same set of global rules, more resilient than others during the Global Financial Crisis?
Building on the rich body of knowledge in institutional analysis and comparative political economy fields, this book  by Caner Bakir  offers an important insight to bank behaviour. It argues that divergence or convergence in bank behaviour within liberal and coordinated market economies cannot be understood from the type of national financial system, whether bank-based or capital markets-based; the type of policy network that dominates the national financial systems; or whether a state has a strong (proactive) or weak (reactive) capacity in financial services. Instead, argues Caner Bakir (Koc University) in this original work supported by solid empirical evidence from five countries, that whether banks adopt conservative or opportunistic behaviour makes sense by reference to interdependent top-down and bottom-up processes among structures, institutions and agents that condition the nature of bank behaviour and its outcomes.
The theoretical frame of the book as well as its arguments are sharp and contributive– and it skillfully deals with the core topics in economic sociology and political economy.