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Jel Classification:N22 

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

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

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
Sovereign Default in the US

In the absence of a judicial mechanism to reduce the debt burden of a sovereign member of our Union, the resolution process can be quick but perhaps too indifferent to the health, safety, and welfare of the affected residents. In this paper, I use evidence from the Arkansas state archives to provide a description of the events surrounding the default of the state in 1933. I examine the evolution of the negotiations, the outcomes, and the role of fiscal policy.
Working Papers (Old Series) , Paper 1609

Report
Beyond thirty: Treasury issuance of long-term bonds from 1953 to 1965

Ever since the emergence of regular and predictable issuance of coupon-bearing Treasury debt in the 1970s, thirty years has marked the outer boundary of Treasury bond maturities. However, longer-term bonds were not unknown in earlier years. Seven such bonds, including one with a forty-year term, were issued between 1955 and 1963. This paper examines the circumstances that led to the issuance of these seven bonds.
Staff Reports , Paper 806

Newsletter
How Common Was Blockbusting in the Postwar U.S.?

This article documents the prevalence of blockbusting—the orchestration of racial turnover in urban neighborhoods—throughout many major U.S. cities from the 1950s through the 1970s.
Chicago Fed Letter , Issue 468 , Pages 6

Working Paper
Banking on the Boom, Tripped by the Bust: Banks and the World War I Agricultural Price Shock

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
Legal Institutions, Credit Markets, and Economic Activity

This paper provides novel evidence on the causal connections between legal institutions, credit markets, and real economic activity. Our analysis exploits an unexplored within-country setting?Native American reservations?together with quasi-experimental variation in legal contract enforcement wherein the US Congress externally assigned state courts to adjudicate contracts on a subset of reservations. According to area-specific data on small business credit, reservations assigned to state courts, which enforce contracts more predictably than tribal courts, have stronger credit markets. ...
Working Papers (Old Series) , Paper 1434

Working Paper
Interbank Connections, Contagion and Bank Distress in the Great Depression

Liquidity shocks transmitted through interbank connections contributed to bank distress during the Great Depression. New data on interbank connections reveal that banks were much more likely to close when their correspondents closed. Further, after the Federal Reserve was established, banks? management of cash and capital buffers was less responsive to network risk, suggesting that banks expected the Fed to reduce network risk. Because the Fed?s presence removed the incentives for the most systemically important banks to maintain capital and cash buffers that had protected against liquidity ...
Working Papers , Paper 2019-001

Working Paper
Network Contagion and Interbank Amplification during the Great Depression

Interbank networks amplified the contraction in lending during the Great Depression. Banking panics induced banks in the hinterland to withdraw interbank deposits from Federal Reserve member banks located in reserve and central reserve cities. These correspondent banks responded by curtailing lending to businesses. Between the peak in the summer of 1929 and the banking holiday in the winter of 1933, interbank amplification reduced aggregate lending in the U.S. economy by an estimated 15 percent.
Working Paper , Paper 16-3

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Wheelock, David C. 19 items

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