Who determined the rules of the game in the Spanish financial reforms, 1970-1990?

Abstract

ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to analyze the Spanish regulatory reforms and to identify the key actors involved in the design and implementation of financial regulation and supervision. We examine the educational and professional profile of those at the helm of the main regulatory bodies (Ministers of Finance and the staff of the Bank of Spain) during the transition to democracy. The main hypothesis we wish to test is whether the reforms that took place in the 1970s and 1980s were carried out by people with a substantially different background to the protagonists of the reforms implemented during Franco’s regime. Our results show that the change in the regulators’ profile emerged in the late 1950s, with an increasingly influential role of the Bank of Spain’s Research Department, and that the reforms of the 1970s and 1980s were carried out by people with a solid academic and professional background, predominantly in economics.