From Wall Street to Bay Street
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From Wall Street to Bay Street

The Origins and Evolution of American and Canadian Finance

Joe Martin and Chris Kobrak
University of Toronto Press, 2018
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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Comprehensive
  • Innovative
  • Background

Recommendation

The United States and Canada together account for more than $23 trillion in global GDP growth. The wealth of each country resides in a political and commercial environment largely dominated by capitalism and buttressed by a robust financial ecosystem. But Wall Street and Bay Street represent two divergent schools of thought on capital markets, the role of regulation and market operations. Economic historians Joe Martin and Chris Kobrak highlight how the American and Canadian financial models developed and examine the institutional, cultural, political, and economic forces that shaped their growth and trajectory. Students of history, business executives and financial professionals will appreciate this detailed and perceptive analysis of US and Canadian finance.

Summary

Compare and Contrast

Connected by history, geography and culture, the United States and Canada also possess a fiscal attachment through trade, economics and finance. Yet despite a shared border stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, the two nations’ financial systems and attitudes toward free market capitalism have diverged over the course of time. Economic stakeholders understand the importance of an efficient, reliable and robust financial infrastructure. However, the American model relies on an innovative and dynamic capacity, while the Canadian one steers toward resiliency and structure. Business and political leaders crafted distinct national architectures in their responses to sovereign, regional, continental and global events. From their respective beginnings, the US and Canadian financial systems morphed through separate trajectories, and these paths produced substantively different outcomes.

During the 2008 global credit crisis, the US banking and financial system imploded, with severe ramifications for the economy. However, the Canadian system withstood the crisis and maintained liquidity, credit access and institutional...

About the Authors

The late Christopher Kobrak was a business history professor at the Rotman School of Management. Joe Martin directs the Canadian Business and Financial History Initiative at the Rotman School of Management.

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