During the contraction from 1929 through 1933, the Federal Reserve System tracked changes in the status of all banks operating in the United States and determined the cause of each bank suspension. This essay analyzes chronological patterns in aggregate series constructed from that data. The...

Hooks and Robinson argue that moral hazard induced by deposit insurance induced banks to invest in riskier assets in Texas during the 1920s. Their regressions suggest this manifestation of moral hazard may explain a portion of the events that occurred during the 1920s, but some other phenomena,...

During the contraction from 1929 through 1933, the Federal Reserve System tracked changes in the status of all banks operating in the United States and determined the cause of each bank suspension. This essay introduces that hitherto dormant data and analyzes chronological patterns in aggregate...

The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 divided Mississippi between the 6th (Atlanta) and 8th (St. Louis) Federal Reserve Districts. Before and during the Great Depression, these districts' policies differed. The Atlanta Fed championed monetary activism and the extension of credit to troubled banks. The...

Between the founding of the Federal Reserve System in 1913 and the depression of the 1930s, three check-clearing systems operated in the United States. The Federal Reserve cleared checks for members of the system. Clearing houses cleared checks for members of their organizations. Correspondents...

Eight states established deposit insurance systems between 1908 and 1917. All abandoned the systems between 1921 and 1930. Scholars debate the costs and benefits of these policy experiments. New data drawn from the archives of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors demonstrate that deposit...

This paper evaluates optimal public investment and fiscal policy for countries characterized by limited tax and debt capacities. We study a non stochastic CRS endogenous growth model where public expenditure is an input in the production process, in countries where distortions and limited...

This paper investigates the association between greater income inequality, de-facto fiscal space, and sovereign spreads. Using data from 50 countries in 2007, 2009 and 2011, we find that higher income inequality is associated with a lower tax base, lower de-facto fiscal space, and higher...

The federal funds rate has been at the zero lower bound for over four years, since December 2008. According to standard macroeconomic models, this should have greatly reduced the effectiveness of monetary policy and increased the efficacy of fiscal policy. However, these models also imply that...

This paper clarifies one of the puzzling results of the economic growth literature: the impact of military expenditure is frequently found to be non-significant or negative, yet most countries spend a large fraction of their GDP on defense and the military. We start by empirical evaluation of...