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Journal Article
Inflation: how long has this been going on?
Journal Article
Credit crunch or what? Australian banks during the 1986–93 credit cycle
There is ongoing debate about how the banking sector's financial condition affects the supply of credit to business and, ultimately, general macroeconomic conditions. The United States does not generate sufficient data to provide satisfactory answers to these questions, given the low frequency of credit cycles. However, the experiences of other developed countries may provide additional insight. This article investigates the 1986-93 credit cycle in Australia. A comparison of key differences and similarities between the U.S. and Australian banking systems allows a useful analysis of the ...
Working Paper
Clearinghouse access and bank runs: comparing New York and Chicago during the Panic of 1907
During the Panic of 1907, New York City trust companies were not members of the New York Clearinghouse whereas trust companies in Chicago were members of the Chicago Clearinghouse. We argue that the apparent isolation of New York City trust companies from the pool of bank reserves controlled by the New York Clearinghouse led to the large-scale depositor runs on the New York City trusts. In contrast, Chicago trust companies had direct access to the Chicago Clearinghouse and their pool of reserves and did not suffer large-scale depositor withdrawals. Statistical evidence on a cross-section of ...
Working Paper
Why didn't the United States establish a central bank until after the panic of 1907?
Monetary historians conventionally trace the establishment of the Federal Reserve System in 1913 to the turbulence of the Panic of 1907. But why did the successful movement for creating a U.S. central bank follow the Panic of 1907 and not any earlier National Banking Era panic? The 1907 panic displayed a less severe output contraction than other national banking era panics, and national bank deposit and loan data suggest only a limited impairment to intermediation through these institutions. ; We argue that the Panic of 1907 was substantially different from earlier National Banking Era ...
Working Paper
Forecasting using relative entropy
The paper describes a relative entropy procedure for imposing moment restrictions on simulated forecast distributions from a variety of models. Starting from an empirical forecast distribution for some variables of interest, the technique generates a new empirical distribution that satisfies a set of moment restrictions. The new distribution is chosen to be as close as possible to the original in the sense of minimizing the associated Kullback-Leibler Information Criterion, or relative entropy. The authors illustrate the technique by using several examples that show how restrictions from ...
Working Paper
Banking and financial crises in United States history: what guidance can history offer policymakers?
This paper assesses the validity of comparisons between the current financial crisis and past crises in the United States. We highlight aspects of two National Banking Era crises (the Panic of 1873 and the Panic of 1907) that are relevant for comparison with the Panic of 2008. In 1873, overinvestment in railroad debt and the default of railroad companies on that debt led to the failure of numerous brokerage houses, precursor to the modern investment bank. During the Panic of 1907, panic-related deposit withdrawals centered on the less regulated trust companies, which had only indirect access ...
Journal Article
Investigating U.S. government and trade deficits