During times of economic crises, the public policy response is to abandon basic economic thinking and engage in “emergency economic” policies. We explore how the current financial crisis was in part caused by previous emergency economic measures. We then investigate the theoretical...

When the Great Depression struck the United States, O.M.W. Sprague was America's foremost expert on financial crises. His History of Crises under the National Banking System is a frequently cited classic. Had he diagnosed a banking panic and called for an aggressive response by the Federal...