Bank's Liquidity Demand in the Presence of a Lender of Last Resort

I use a natural experiment to estimate the effect that a Lender of Last Resort has on banks’ liquidity demand. In December 1996 Argentina’s Central Bank signed with a group of international banks a contingent credit line agreement that enhanced its ability to act as a LLR. I run difference-in-difference regressions of the effect of the announcement of the insurance contract on banks’ liquidity holdings, using ownership status and size to identify the groups of treatment and control banks. Finally I rule out general equilibrium feedback effects through the interbank market between control and treatment banks. Results indicate a reduction of approximately 6.7 percentage points in banks’ liquidity holdings in the presence of a LLR.