In all the countries examined in the chapters presented above and in part IV, there have been long running, and often highly politicized, debates about the influence of banks. In the papers it is chiefly the economic impact of banks that provides the focus of attention: did the nature of the financial system accelerate or retard economic development? In the light of the political controversy about this issue, it is surprising that most economic historians have not been able to give any kind of confident answer. The conclusion of Raymond Goldsmith's path-breaking work is self-consciously agnostic:

Two of the most popular criticisms of banks have been on the one hand that they denied credit to industry (as a result of excessive caution, or of a gentlemanly contempt for manufacture), and on the other that they diverted funds into excessive overseas lending. These points have been made for the British, Belgian, French, German, Swedish and Swiss cases. Accounts of the malaise vary from country to country: capital export is much more of a theme in the French, British and Swiss literature than it is in the German example.