WHILE many aspects of manufacturing industry and the distributive trades have been explored by industrial economists, comparatively little attention has been paid to the analysis of financial markets. In Britain, statutory bodies such as the Monopolies Commission have occasionally investigated the activities of financial companies, notably the commercial banks, but the academic literature is scanty. This is somewhat surprising in view of the importance of the financial sector in the country's economic activity and the impact of changes in the organization of financial markets on the charac- teristics of industry