Search Results

(refine search)

SORT BY: PREVIOUS / NEXT

All:
Title:
Author:
Abstract:
Keywords:

+ Add Search Parameter

Working Paper
Navigating Constraints: The Evolution of Federal Reserve Monetary Policy, 1935-59
Carlson, Mark A.; Wheelock, David C. (2014-06-09)
The 1950s are often pointed to as a decade in which the Federal Reserve operated a particularly successful monetary policy. The present paper examines the evolution of Federal Reserve monetary policy from the mid-1930s through the 1950s in an effort to understand better the apparent success of policy in the 1950s. Whereas others have debated whether the Fed had a sophisticated understanding of how to implement policy, our focus is on how the constraints on the Fed changed over time. Roosevelt Administration gold policies and New Deal legislation limited the Fed's ability to conduct an ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2014-44

Working Paper
Did Doubling Reserve Requirements Cause the 1937-38 Recession? New Evidence on the Impact of Reserve Requirements on Bank Reserve Demand and Lending
Wheelock, David C.; Mason, Joseph R.; Calomiris, Charles W. (2022-05-04)
In 1936-37, the Federal Reserve doubled member banks' reserve requirements. Friedman and Schwartz (1963) famously argued that the doubling increased reserve demand and forced the money supply to contract, which they argued caused the recession of 1937-38. Using a new database on individual banks, we show that higher reserve requirements did not generally increase banks' reserve demand or contract lending because reserve requirements were not binding for most banks. Aggregate effects on credit supply from reserve requirement increases were therefore economically small and statistically zero.
Working Papers , Paper 2022-011

Working Paper
Managing a New Policy Framework: Paul Volcker, the St. Louis Fed, and the 1979-82 War on Inflation
Wheelock, David C.; Kliesen, Kevin L. (2020-07-23)
In October 1979, Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker persuaded his FOMC colleagues to adopt a new policy framework that i) accepted responsibility for controlling inflation and ii) implemented new operating procedures to control the growth of monetary aggregates in an effort to restore price stability. These moves were strongly supported by monetarist-oriented economists, including the leadership and staff of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The next three years saw inflation peak and then fall sharply, but also two recessions and considerable volatility in interest rates and money ...
Working Papers , Paper 2020-022

Working Paper
Does the structure of banking markets affect economic growth? evidence from U.S. state banking markets
Wheelock, David C.; Mitchener, Kris James (2010)
This paper examines the relationship between the structure of banking markets and economic growth using a new dataset on manufacturing industry-level growth rates and banking market concentration for U.S. states during 1899-1929 - a period when the manufacturing sector was expanding rapidly and restrictive branching laws segmented the U.S. banking system geographically. Unlike studies of modern developing and developed countries, we find that banking market concentration had a positive impact on manufacturing sector growth in the early twentieth century, with little variation across ...
Working Papers , Paper 2010-004

Working Paper
Are credit unions too small?
Wheelock, David C.; Wilson, Paul W. (2008)
Since 1985, the share of U.S. depository institution assets held by credit unions has nearly doubled, and the average (inflation-adjusted) size of credit unions has increased over 600 percent. We use a non-parametric local-linear estimator to estimate a cost relationship for credit unions and derive estimates of ray-scale and expansion-path scale economies. We employ a dimension-reduction technique to reduce estimation error, and bootstrap methods for inference. We find substantial evidence of increasing returns to scale across the range of sizes observed among credit unions, suggesting that ...
Working Papers , Paper 2008-033

Working Paper
Banking on the Boom, Tripped by the Bust: Banks and the World War I Agricultural Price Shock
Wheelock, David C.; Jaremski, Matthew (2017-11-03)
How do banks respond to asset booms? This paper examines i) how U.S. banks responded to the World War I farmland boom; ii) the impact of regulation; and iii) how bank closures exacerbated the post-war bust. The boom encouraged new bank formation and balance sheet expansion (especially by new banks). Deposit insurance amplified the impact of rising crop prices on bank portfolios, while higher minimum capital requirements dampened the effects. Banks that responded most aggressively to the asset boom had a higher probability of closing in the bust, and counties with more bank closures ...
Working Papers , Paper 2017-36

Working Paper
Technical progress, inefficiency and productivity change in U.S. banking, 1984-1993
Wheelock, David C.; Wilson, Paul W. (1996)
Numerous studies have found that US commercial banks are quite inefficient, and we find that, on average, banks became more technically inefficient between 1984 and 1993. Our analysis of productivity change, however, shows that technological improvements adopted by a few banks pushed out the efficient frontier, and that, on average, commercial banks experienced productivity gains. For banks with assets less than 0 million, however, technological improvement was insufficient to offset increased inefficiency, and thus productivity declined over the period. Our findings suggest that increasing ...
Working Papers , Paper 1994-021

Journal Article
Banking industry consolidation and market structure: impact of the financial crisis and recession
Wheelock, David C. (2011-11)
The number of U.S. commercial banks and savings institutions declined by 12 percent between December 31, 2006, and December 31, 2010, continuing a consolidation trend begun in the mid-1980s. Banking industry consolidation has been marked by sharply higher shares of deposits held by the largest banks?the 10 largest banks now hold nearly 50 percent of total U.S. deposits. However, antitrust policy is predicated on the assumption that banking markets are local in nature, and enforcement has focused on preventing bank mergers from increasing the concentration of local banking markets. The author ...
Review , Volume 93 , Issue Nov , Pages 419-438

Working Paper
Aggregate price shocks and financial instability: a historical analysis
Dueker, Michael J.; Bordo, Michael D.; Wheelock, David C. (2001)
This paper presents empirical evidence on the hypothesis that aggregate price disturbances cause or worsen financial distress. We construct two annual indexes of financial conditions for the United States covering 1790-1997, and estimate the effect of aggregate price shocks on each index using a dynamic ordered probit model. We find that price level shocks contributed to financial instability during 1790-1933, and that inflation rate shocks contributed to financial instability during 1980-97. Our research indicates that the size of the aggregate price shocks needed to qualitatively alter ...
Working Papers , Paper 2000-005

Journal Article
Changing the rules: state mortgage foreclosure moratoria during the Great Depression
Wheelock, David C. (2008-11)
Many U.S. states imposed temporary moratoria on farm and nonfarm residential mortgage foreclosures during the Great Depression. This article describes the conditions that led some states to impose these moratoria and other mortgage relief during the Depression and discusses the economic effects. Moratoria were more common in states with large farm populations (as a percentage of total state population) and high farm mortgage foreclosure rates, although nonfarm mortgage distress appears to help explain why a few states with relatively low farm foreclosure rates also imposed moratoria. The ...
Review , Volume 90 , Issue Nov , Pages 569-584

show more (24)

PREVIOUS / NEXT

Fed in Print

Search Results

FILTER BY year

FILTER BY Bank

FILTER BY Series

FILTER BY Content Type

FILTER BY Author

FILTER BY Jel Classification

FILTER BY Keywords