Economic Bulletin is now archived and no
longer receiving submissions with this publisher. All articles published in the journal during its time with Springer will remain fully searchable through our websites.
1 The main statements in this article are taken from the report ‚Untersuchung der Grundlagen und Entwicklungsperspektiven des Bankensektors in Deutschland (Dreisäulensystem)‘ for the Federal Ministry of Finance, cf. www.diw.de/deutsch/produkte/publikationen/gutachten/aktuell/index.html.