Facultad de Económicas y CC Empresariales

In 1962, the Ley de Bases para la Ordenación del Crédito y de la Banca (LBOCB) was passed, which sought, at least theoretically, to introduce greater competition in the Spanish banking sector. After more than a century, the banking sector was forced to specialize and to choose between the provision of commercial services (the raising of short-term deposits and loans and discounting of bills) or the financing of industrial activities (typical of industrial banking). The sector, characterized by the presence of a multitude of small and medium-sized banks, presented oligopolistic features as more than 80% of the resources were in the hands of the large national banks. The aim of this paper is to characterize the activity of Spanish banks in 1955 and 1965. By means of a multicriteria analysis, a classification of the banks according to different parameters is proposed, with the aim of contrasting whether the banking strategy was similar or not. This work is framed in the tradition of the New Economic History or Cliometrics developed in the 70's of the 20th century, characterized by the interconnection of mathematics, economics, and statistics in the historical analysis.