You should discuss to what degree your home country can be considered as bank-based financial system or whether it is a market-based financial systems. The use of more recent indicators showing the orientation of a financial system towards markets or intermediaries is encouraged. You should also cite some of the indicators commonly used to determine whether a country’s system is bank- or market-based, including: size of stock markets vs bank assets to GDP, sources of corporate financing. Then, you are expected to review the events of the recent financial crisis of 2007/2008 (starting with increasing defaults in the US subprime mortgage sector) and discuss how your home country performed during that period. You may want to discuss whether one system has certain advantages or disadvantages in performing the functions commonly attributed to banks and financial markets. Moreover, you are encouraged to address the question of how the orientation of a country’s financial system towards banks or markets may have impacted its long-term economic performance, using various dimensions of comparisons.