This is an important and complex research question.  There is no repository of findings on this issue, and I am not aware of any study that has attempted to estimate the global totals.  Quite a few years ago there was a study that tried to estimate the aggregate subsidy inherent in U.S. deposit insurance pricing, which would be one small component of the answer to your question, but FDIC pricing has changed a lot since that study was done so even its conclusions would no longer be valid. 

For many reasons, this is a really big issue. First, we have to consider the financialisation phenomenon (see pages 92-5 in my recent book, attached below) that has made the financial sector much more powerful than before; second, high public debts mean (for a global analysis of public debt see pages 123-7 in my book), in practice, continuous fiscal support for private financial sector instead of collecting taxes in time from private persons and companies; third, illicit flows of money out of poor and middle-income countries to banks in rich countries (see an analysis of global corruption in pages 152-7) is a form of international subsidies; fourth, the huge subsidies through the US Fed to the financial sector are described in Stockman, D. A. 2014. The Great Deformation; the Corruption of Capitalism in America.

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Sherril, thanks for the response. No doubt, it's a challenging question, and we may not arrive at a final exact figure, however we intend to shed more light on an issue that has largely been kept in the dark. I would be interested in finding out more about the study you mentioned. While the information may be outdated, the methodology could be useful in understanding how to go about quantifying the subsidy amount.   

Hi Mwangi,

As per Europe, you may find some information in the source below; Aid to the financial Sector.

"The State aid Scoreboard is the Commission's benchmarking instrument for providing a transparent and publicly accessible source of information on the State aid expenditure in the EU and the Member States"

 http://ec.europa.eu/competition/state_aid/scoreboard/financial_economic_crisis_aid_en.html

Best

regards

Giacomo

Thanks Giacomo, this is very useful, good information about interventions in reaction to the financial crisis. Our scope is wider than the 2008 - 12 period but this is useful nonetheless.

Veli, your response is appreciated too. You make an interesting point about considering illicit financial flows from low-income countries to wealthy countries as subsidies. This does raise a difficulty in quantifying since they are inherently difficult to detect. We'll have to dig deeper into this.