During the last decades a consensus has emerged that it is impossible to disentangle liquidity shocks from solvency shocks. As a consequence the classical lender of last resort rules, as defined by Thornton and Bagehot, based on lending to solvent illiquid institutions appear ill-suited to this...

Because of secrecy, little is known about the political economy of central bank lending. Utilizing a novel, hand-collected historical daily dataset on loans to commercial banks, we analyze how personal connections matter for lending of last resort, highlighting the importance of governance for...

The nineteenth-century economist Walter Bagehot maintained that in order to prevent bank panics, a central bank should provide liquidity at a very high rate of interest. However, most of the theoretical literature on liquidity provision suggests that central banks should lend at an interest rate...

Specific ideas about the Fisher relation between real and nominal interest rates and more general ideas about the nature of the central bank's duty to support the financial system in times of crisis were important to the Monetarist re-assessment of the causes of the Great Depression and what...

The paper provides a baseline model for regulatory analysis of systemic liquidity shocks. We show that banks may have an incentive to invest excessively in illiquid long term projects. In the prevailing mixed strategy equilibrium the allocation is inferior from the investor’s point of view...

The National Monetary Commission was deeply concerned with importing best practice. One important focus was the connection between the money market and international trade. It was said that Britain's lead in the market for acceptances originating in international trade was the basis of its...

This paper reviews the performance of the euro area since the euro's launch 20 years ago. It argues that the euro crisis has exposed existential flaws in the euro regime. Intra-area divergences and the corresponding buildup of imbalances had remained unchecked prior to the crisis. As those...

We reconsider the role of financial intermediaries in monetary economics. We explore the hypothesis that financial intermediaries drive the business cycle by way of their role in determining the price of risk. In this framework, balance sheet quantities emerge as a key indicator of risk appetite...

Traditionally, aggregate liquidity shocks are modelled as exogenous events. Extending our previous work (Cao & Illing, 2008), this paper analyses the adequate policy response to endogenous systemic liquidity risk. We analyse the feedback between lender of last resort policy and incentives of...

Traditionally, aggregate liquidity shocks are modelled as exogenous events. Extending our previous work (Cao & Illing, 2007), this paper analyses the adequate policy response to endogenous systemic liquidity risk. We analyse the feedback between lender of last resort policy and incentives of...