Evolution of competition in the post-deregulation period I’ll take as a starting point a snapshot of the aggregate balance sheet of the banking system in 1980 – just before the main sweep of financial deregulation got under way (Table 1). Banks’ balance sheets back then looked rather different from the way they do now.
To quote a few of the statistics: •  Real GDP growth has averaged close to 9 percent since 2002;  •  per capita income has more than doubled from $ to $  •  unemployment has been halved from 10.4 percent in 2002 to under 5 percent;  •  the public debt ratio has also been halved to about 30 percent of GDP while;  •  our net international reserve position has risen from $ billion to $ billion.