Preface and Acknowledgements; 1. Introduction; Part I. Banks, Credits and the Macroeconomy: A Puzzle: 2. Credit, financial markets and the macroeconomy: different approaches and a proposed perspective; 3. Securitization and the empirics of bank credit; Part II. Interactions between Credit and Industry: Firms Market Power and Banks Liquidity Preference: 4. Investments and monetary policy with oligopsony in the market for credit; 5. Banks' assets and liquidity preference, an empirical investigation based on the free liquidity ratio for commercial banks; Part III. 'Inside the Firm': Interactions between Finance and Investments: 6. Investments with firm-specific financial costs and 'transaction' adjustment costs; 7. Are investments and financial structure two faces of the same decision, a qualitative approach; Summing up; Bibliography; Index.