In fighting a financial crisis, opacity (keeping the names of banks borrowing at emergency lending facilities secret) and stigma (the cost of having a bank's name revealed) are desirable to restore confidence. Lending facilities raise the perceived average quality of all banks' assets. Opacity...

In this paper we trace the evolution of the lender of last resort doctrine--and its implementation--from the nineteenth century through the panic of 2008. We find that typically the most influential economists "fight the last war": formulating policy guidelines that would have dealt effectively...

We examine the evolution of real per capita GDP around 100 systemic banking crises. Part of the costs of these crises owes to the protracted nature of recovery. On average, it takes about eight years to reach the pre-crisis level of income; the median is about 6 ½ years. Five to six years after...

All economists should be conversant with "what happened?" during the financial crisis of 2007-2009. We select and summarize 16 documents, including academic papers and reports from regulatory and international agencies. This reading list covers the key facts and mechanisms in the build-up of...

Gorton and Huang (2001) argue that private coalitions of banks can act as central banks, issuing private money and providing deposit insurance during times of panic. This lender-of-last-resort role depends upon banking panics occurring threat of liquidation makes the private bank coalition...

We develop a quantitative equilibrium model of financial crises to assess the interaction between ex-post interventions in credit markets and the buildup of risk ex ante. During a systemic crisis, bailouts relax balance sheet constraints and mitigate the severity of the recession. Ex ante, the...

We consider bank panic models in which, depending on the configuration of fundamentals, there can be a positive probability of a bank panic. A crucial assumption in these models is that new equity cannot enter in a panic. We quantify the importance of this assumption by computing the minimal...

We employ a unique hand-collected dataset and a novel methodology to examine systemic risk before and after the largest U.S. banking crisis of the 20th century. Our systemic risk measure captures both the credit risk of an individual bank as well as a bank's position in the network. We construct...

Looking back to the 1930s provides the opportunity to examine one severe mortgage crisis as we live through another. This paper examines the development of the residential mortgage market during the 1920s, the institutional disruptions that occurred in the 1930s and the policy response of...