This paper seeks to redress a seeming imbalance. In recent years a number of positive theories of capital market equilibrium have obtained wide currency, but these models seem, at first glance, to say very little about financial intermediaries: In particular, why do they exist, and what is their function in the capital market?

Inasmuch as such firms as banks, thrift institutions, and insurance companies and organized securities markets are observed to be important actors in the capital markets, an attempt is made here to analyze their role and function in the context of capital market theory. We show that intermediation is a service performed both by marketable secondary securi ties and by claims issued by institutional intermediaries. The existing structure of the provision of these intermediary services follows directly from the interaction of demand and supply, demand viewed as the aggrega tion of individual demands for security attributes in a portfolio context and supply being a function of the structure of the costs of transacting.

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