This paper seeks to explain the collapse of the market for bankers' acceptances between 1931 and 1932 by tracing the doctrinal foundations of Federal Reserve policy and regulations back to the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. I argue that a determinant of the collapse of the market was Carter Glass'...

I assess how dissenting views on appropriate monetary policy result in disagreement about the macroeconomic outlook of Federal Open Market Committee members. FOMC members that voted for a higher Fed Funds Rate than the majority of voters also forecast higher inflation rates, while they forecast...

We analyze the strategic interaction between undercapitalized banks and a supervisor who may intervene by preventive recapitalization. Supervisory forbearance emerges because political and fiscal costs undermine supervisors' commitment to intervene. When supervisors have lower credibility,...

German savers are renowned for preferring safe, long-term investments, thus providing patient capital, with bank deposits playing an important role. Using a comprehensive data set for the German banking sector, we examine whether German depositors are really that patient, abstaining from any...

We develop a macroeconomic portfolio stress test that is specifically geared towards small and medium-sized banks. We combine a credit risk stress test which simulates credit impairments via a CreditMetrics type multi-factor portfolio model with an income stress test in the form of dynamic panel...

In general, banks play a growth-enhancing role for the real economy. However, distorted incentives for banks, depositors, and regulators in connection with bank insolvency may corrupt banks' credit allocation and monitoring decisions, leading to suboptimal real economic outcomes. A rules-based...