"The efficiency of common law rules is central to achieving efficient resource allocation in a market economy. While many theories suggest reasons why judge-made law should tend toward efficient rules, the question whether the common law actually does converge in commercial areas has remained...

The classical doctrine of the Lender of Last Resort, elaborated by Thornton (1802) and Bagehot (1873), asserts that the Central Bank should lend to „illiquid but solvent“ banks under certain conditions. Several authors have argued that this view is now obsolete: when interbank markets are...

Central bank policy suffers from time-inconsistency when facing a banking crisis : A bailout is optimal ex post but ex ante it should be limited to control moral hazard. Dollarization provides a credible commitment not to help at the cost of not helping even when it would be ex ante optimal to...