[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/14422.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Can a Lender of Last Resort Stabilize Financial Markets? Lessons from the Founding of the Fed

Author

Listed:
  • Asaf Bernstein
  • Eric Hughson
  • Marc D. Weidenmier
Abstract
We use the founding of the Federal Reserve as a historical experiment to provide some insight into whether a lender of last resort can stabilize financial markets. Following the Panic of 1907, Congress passed two measures that established a lender of last resort in the United States: (1) the Aldrich-Vreeland Act of 1908 which authorized certain banks to issue emergency currency during a financial crisis and (2) the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 which established a central bank. We employ a new identification strategy to isolate the effects of the introduction of a lender of last resort from other macroeconomic shocks. We compare the standard deviation of stock returns and short-term interest rates over time across the months of September and October, the two months of the year when financial markets were most vulnerable to a crash because of financial stringency from the harvest season, with the rest of the year during the period 1870-1925. Stock volatility in the post-1907 period (June 1908-1925) was more than 40 percent lower in the months of September and October compared to the period (1870- May 1908). We also find that the volatility of the call loan rate declined nearly 70 percent in September and October following the monetary regime change.

Suggested Citation

  • Asaf Bernstein & Eric Hughson & Marc D. Weidenmier, 2008. "Can a Lender of Last Resort Stabilize Financial Markets? Lessons from the Founding of the Fed," NBER Working Papers 14422, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:14422
    Note: DAE ME
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w14422.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Moen, Jon R. & Tallman, Ellis W., 2000. "Clearinghouse Membership and Deposit Contraction during the Panic of 1907," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 60(1), pages 145-163, March.
    2. Nason, James M. & Tallman, Ellis W., 2015. "Business Cycles And Financial Crises: The Roles Of Credit Supply And Demand Shocks," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 19(4), pages 836-882, June.
    3. Joseph H. Davis & Christopher Hanes & Paul W. Rhode, 2009. "Harvests and Business Cycles in Nineteenth-Century America," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(4), pages 1675-1727.
    4. Schwert, G. William, 1989. "Business cycles, financial crises, and stock volatility," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 83-125, January.
    5. Miron, Jeffrey A, 1986. "Financial Panics, the Seasonality of the Nominal Interest Rate, and theFounding of the Fed," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(1), pages 125-140, March.
    6. Caporale, Tony & McKiernan, Barbara, 1998. "Interest Rate Uncertainty and the Founding of the Federal Reserve," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 58(4), pages 1110-1117, December.
    7. Shapiro, Matthew D, 1988. "The Stabilization of the U.S. Economy: Evidence from the Stock Marke t," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(5), pages 1067-1079, December.
    8. Ben S. Bernanke & Mark Gertler, 1999. "Monetary policy and asset price volatility," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, pages 77-128.
    9. Bernanke, Ben & Gertler, Mark, 1989. "Agency Costs, Net Worth, and Business Fluctuations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(1), pages 14-31, March.
    10. repec:bla:jfinan:v:44:y:1989:i:5:p:1115-53 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Bruce Champ & Bruce D. Smith & Stephen D. Williamson, 1996. "Currency Elasticity and Banking Panics: Theory and Evidence," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 29(4), pages 828-864, November.
    12. N. Gregory Mankiw & Jeffrey A. Miron, 1986. "The Changing Behavior of the Term Structure of Interest Rates," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 101(2), pages 211-228.
    13. A. Piatt Andrew, 1906. "The Influence of the Crops upon Business in America," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 20(3), pages 323-352.
    14. Schwert, G William, 1990. "Stock Returns and Real Activity: A Century of Evidence," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 45(4), pages 1237-1257, September.
    15. Robert J. Shiller, 1992. "Market Volatility," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262691515, April.
    16. Mankiw, N Gregory & Miron, Jeffrey A & Weil, David N, 1987. "The Adjustment of Expectations to a Change in Regime: A Study of the Founding of the Federal Reserve," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(3), pages 358-374, June.
    17. William O. Brown, Jr. & J. Harold Mulherin & Marc D. Weidenmier, 2006. "Competing With the NYSE," NBER Working Papers 12343, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Clark, Truman A, 1986. "Interest Rate Seasonals and the Federal Reserve," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(1), pages 76-125, February.
    19. Kool Clemens J. M., 1995. "War Finance and Interest Rate Targeting: Regime Changes in 1914-1918," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 365-382, July.
    20. Goetzmann, William N. & Ibbotson, Roger G. & Peng, Liang, 2001. "A new historical database for the NYSE 1815 to 1925: Performance and predictability," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 4(1), pages 1-32, January.
    21. Caporale, Barbara & Caporale, Tony, 2003. "Investigating the effects of monetary regime shifts: The case of the Federal Reserve and the shrinking risk premium," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 80(1), pages 87-91, July.
    22. Grossman Richard S., 1993. "The Macroeconomic Consequences of Bank Failures under the National Banking System," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 294-320, July.
    23. Bruce A. Champ & Scott Freeman & Warren E. Weber, 1999. "Redemption costs and interest rates under the U.S. National Banking System," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, pages 568-595.
    24. Silber, William L., 2005. "What happened to liquidity when world war I shut the NYSE?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(3), pages 685-701, December.
    25. Bruce A. Champ & Neil Wallace, 2003. "Resolving the National Banking System note-issue puzzle," Working Papers (Old Series) 0316, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
    26. Fishe, Raymond P H & Wohar, Mark, 1990. "The Adjustment of Expectations to a Change in Regime: Comment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(4), pages 968-976, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bernstein, Asaf & Hughson, Eric & Weidenmier, Marc D., 2010. "Identifying the effects of a lender of last resort on financial markets: Lessons from the founding of the fed," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 98(1), pages 40-53, October.
    2. Gorton, Gary & Winton, Andrew, 2003. "Financial intermediation," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 8, pages 431-552, Elsevier.
    3. Eugene N. White, 2011. ""To Establish a More Effective Supervision of Banking": How the Birth of the Fed Altered Bank Supervision," NBER Working Papers 16825, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Santos, Joseph, 2003. "Commodity futures contracts: Furnishing an elastic currency in the nineteenth century," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 25(4), pages 561-578, December.
    5. Eugene N. White, 2014. "Lessons from the Great American Real Estate Boom and Bust of the 1920s," NBER Chapters, in: Housing and Mortgage Markets in Historical Perspective, pages 115-158, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Bordo, Michael D. & Schwartz, Anna J., 1999. "Monetary policy regimes and economic performance: The historical record," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 3, pages 149-234, Elsevier.
    7. Joseph H. Davis & Christopher Hanes & Paul W. Rhode, 2009. "Harvests and Business Cycles in Nineteenth-Century America," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(4), pages 1675-1727.
    8. Barsky, Robert B. & Mankiw, N. Gregory & Miron, Jeffrey A. & Weill, David N., 1988. "The worldwide change in the behavior of interest rates and prices in 1914," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 32(5), pages 1123-1147, June.
    9. Mankiw, N. Gregory & Miron, Jeffrey A., 1991. "Should the fed smooth interest rates? the case of seasonal monetary policy," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 41-69, January.
    10. Gary B. Gorton & Andrew Metrick, 2013. "The Federal Reserve and Financial Regulation: The First Hundred Years," NBER Working Papers 19292, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Jaremski, Matthew, 2018. "The (dis)advantages of clearinghouses before the Fed," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(3), pages 435-458.
    12. Gorton, Gary & Huang, Lixin, 2006. "Bank panics and the endogeneity of central banking," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(7), pages 1613-1629, October.
    13. Perez, Stephen J. & Siegler, Mark V., 2006. "Agricultural and monetary shocks before the great depression: A graph-theoretic causal investigation," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 720-736, December.
    14. Hoag, Christopher, 2005. "Deposit drains on "interest-paying" banks before financial crises," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 42(4), pages 567-585, October.
    15. Felton, Andrew & Reinhart, Carmen M. (ed.), 2009. "The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century Part II: June–December, 2008," Vox eBooks, Centre for Economic Policy Research, number p199.
    16. Michael D. Bordo, 1989. "The Contribution of "A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960" to Monetary History," NBER Chapters, in: Money, History, and International Finance: Essays in Honor of Anna J. Schwartz, pages 15-78, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Quinn, Stephen & Roberds, William, 2014. "How Amsterdam got fiat money," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 1-12.
    18. Calomiris, Charles W. & Flandreau, Marc & Laeven, Luc, 2016. "Political foundations of the lender of last resort: A global historical narrative," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 28(C), pages 48-65.
    19. Kupiec, Paul H. & Ramirez, Carlos D., 2013. "Bank failures and the cost of systemic risk: Evidence from 1900 to 1930," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 22(3), pages 285-307.
    20. R. Alton Gilbert, 1999. "Effects of Federal Reserve services on the efficiency of the system for collecting checks in the United States: 1915--30," Working Papers 1999-014, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E4 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates
    • G1 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets
    • N11 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations - - - U.S.; Canada: Pre-1913
    • N12 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations - - - U.S.; Canada: 1913-

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:14422. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.