In 1913, Congress purposefully created the Federal Reserve as an independent central bank, which created a fundamental tension: how to ensure the Fed remains accountable to the electorate without losing its independence. Over the years, there have been changes in the Fed’s structure to improve...

This paper provides a simple two-depositor, two-stage model to understand how a bank’s withdrawal history affects an individual’s decision about withdrawals, which could possibly trigger bank runs. Individual depositors have private information about their personal consumption types and...