Financial revolutions and economic growth: Introducing this EEH symposium

This special issue of Explorations in Economic History includes four articles that delve into the 19th century financial development of Belgium, Germany, Sweden, and Japan, and relate these developments to economic growth. In this guest editor's introduction, we survey current thinking about “financial revolutions” and their role in rapidly assembling the factors that can set modern growth into motion, and link this paradigm to both the more traditional and recent literatures on banks, stock markets, and growth. We conclude with summaries and some commentary on the articles that follow.