This paper explores the secular tradition of public banking in Southern Italy, focusing in particular on the nineteenth century. In its long history, Southern public banking took different forms, characterised by different degrees of centralisation, of control exercised by local or state...

Central banks create money to lend during credit crunches, which might lead to inflation. We examine whether the two key functions of central banks - price stability and last-resort lending - conflict. We develop a nominal model of bank runs à la Diamond and Dybvig (1983) in which individuals...

We present new statistical indicators of the structure and performance of US banks from 1990 to today, geographically disaggregated at the level of individual counties. The constructed data set (20 indicators for some 3150 counties over 31 years, for a total of about 2 million data points)...

Economic historians remain divided over America’s experiment with free banking during the antebellum era. Some argue that the reforms, which liberalized the bank-chartering process, simply exchanged one set of entry barriers for another, while others hold that free banking improved competition...

This paper asks whether the vaunted comparative stability of the Canadian banking system has been purchased at the cost of creating an oligopoly. We assembled a data set that compares bank failures, lending rates, interest paid on deposits and related variables over the period 1920 to 1980. Our...

There has been considerable interest in recent years in historical experiments with "free banking." This paper examines once again the American experiments in the decades before the Civil War, and the recent literature on them. The lessons of this experience for four issues are considered: (1)...

This paper argues that the banking crises in the United States in the early 1930s were similar to the twin crises' -- banking and balance of payments crises -- which have occurred in developing countries in recent years. The downturn that began in 1929 undermined banks that had made risky loans...

Canada’s largest banks rely on private developers of regulatory technology (RegTech) to comply with the requirements of the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI). RegTech’s algorithms allow banks to organize unstructured data, identify, assess, and mitigate risk, and...

Important questions concerning the structure and operation of a European central bank remain to be answered. Although there exists no precedent for the process of institution-building in which the European Community is currently engaged, the founding and early operation of the Federal Reserve...

Studies of pre-Depression banking argue that banking panics resulted from depositor confusion about the incidence of shocks, and that interbank cooperation avoided unwarranted failures. This paper uses individual bank data to address the question of whether solvent Chicago banks failed during...

President Jackson vetoed the bill to re-charter the Second Bank of the United States on 10 July 1832. I describe events leading to the veto and through the Bank’s dissolution in 1836 using private correspondence and official government documents. These sources reveal a political process...

This paper draws lessons on the central bank underpinnings of money from the rise and fall of the Bank of Amsterdam (1609-1820). The Bank started out as a "stablecoin": it issued deposits backed by silver and gold coins, and settled payments by transfers across deposits. Over time, it performed...

In this paper we compare the performance of the U.S. and Canadian banking systems from 1870-1925 in terms of stability and efficiency. In an earlier study we found that the Canadian banking system, based on nationwide branch banking, dominated the U.S. system, based on unit banking, on both...

Does enhanced shareholder liability reduce bank failure? We compare the performance of around 4,200 state-regulated banks of similar size in neighboring U.S. states with different liability regimes during the Great Depression. The distress rate of limited liability banks was 29% higher than that...

Wer sich mit Geld und Banken im Deutschen Reich in der Zeit des späten Kaiserreiches und der Weimarer Republik beschäftigt, stößt unweigerlich auf den Namen Alfred Lansburgh (1872-1937) und seine Zeitschrift "Die Bank", die von 1908 bis 1943 erschien. Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung...

We present new statistical indicators of the structure and performance of US banks from 1990 to today, geographically disaggregated at the level of individual counties. The constructed data set (20 indicators for some 3150 counties over 31 years, for a total of about 2 million data points)...

This paper links banking system development to the colonial and legal history of African countries. Based on a sample of 40 African countries from 2000 to 2018, our empirical findings show a significant dependence of current financial institutions on the inherited legal origin and the...

We study the process of capacity reduction by multi-plant firms competing in many markets, following a permanent, negative aggregate demand shock. The resulting insight on strategic plant closure is relevant to competition policy. We focus on the measurement of strategic delay in local markets,...

In this essay, I make the case for the historical study of bank supervision—both that historical methods are necessary to understanding the shape and structure of supervision in the present and that the study of supervision will contribute to active and important historiographical debates....

Following the financial crisis of 2007-08, capital requirements were revised along a number of important dimensions with the intent of shoring up the banking system and reducing the likelihood of another crisis. Changes included new measures of capital and increased minimum requirements, with...

We examine historical banking crises through the lens of bank equity declines, which cover a broad sample of episodes of banking distress both with and without banking panics. To do this, we construct a new dataset on bank equity returns and narrative information on banking panics for 46...

This article examines the recent controversy between the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) and the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company (MetLife) concerning the FSOC's final determination concerning the need for the FSOC to oversee MetLife's shadow banking activities and the company's...

There is an important policy discussion in Denmark and Sweden on joining the banking union. This article reviews the pros and cons of joining. The main rationale for joining the banking union is cross-border banking in the EU internal market. Reviewing the banking systems, we find that Denmark...

This research looks into the functioning of the Reserve Bank of India and how the economics of the country is geared together with the reserve bank. This research focuses on the gold reserve of the Reserve Bank of India and its mechanisms as a tool of controlling and operating the economy of the...

This paper seeks to explain the collapse of the market for bankers' acceptances between 1931 and 1932 by tracing the doctrinal foundations of Federal Reserve policy and regulations back to the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. I argue that a determinant of the collapse of the market was Carter Glass'...

This paper links banking systems development to the colonial and legal history of African countries. Specifically, we investigate the impact of differing legal traditions on the development of existing investor and creditor protection, and on African banking systems. Based on a sample of 40...

This study examines whether the transition from a system of multiple issuing banks to a monopoly on currency issuance was a step in the Bank of Spain’s becoming a central bank in the true sense of the word (a non-profit-maximizing institution); or on the contrary, whether the Bank used its...

The Great Depression is infamous for banking panics, which were a symptomatic of a phenomenon that scholars have labeled a contagion of fear. Using geocoded, microdata on bank distress, we develop metrics that illuminate the incidence of these events and how banks that remained in operation...

This paper provides an account of the history of Deutsche Bank in the style of a narrative. Since more than 120 years, Deutsche Bank has been the most important German bank. Its history has been shaped by crises and efforts to overcome them. Moreover, throughout its history, the development of...

When in 1860 Southern Italy was annexed to the Kingdom of Italy, it suddenly found itself within a larger national market characterised by high levels of public debt, a new currency and increased competition in banking. Monetary problems, the depreciation of public bonds and the loss of...

This paper links banking systems development to the colonial and legal history of African countries. Specifically, we investigate the impact of differing legal traditions on the development of existing investor and creditor protection, and on African banking systems. Based on a sample of 40...

From its foundation as a private corporation in 1694 the Bank of England extended large amounts of credit to support the British private economy and to support an increasingly centralized British state. The Bank helped the British state reach a position of geopolitical and economic hegemony in...