This paper develops a model in which panics are caused by the strategic behavior of agents who temporarily monopolize the supply of privately controlled cash reserves. The decision to exercise this "monopoly power" results in localized "corners" on the money market and hence an abrupt alteration...

Four views on the proper role of the lender of last resort are defined. Historical evidence is given on the causes of banking panics in the U.S. and other countries and the roles lenders of last resort played in resolving them.

Henry Thornton (1760-1815) and Walter Bagehot (1826-1877) laid down a set of rules for stopping banking panics and crises. Known collectively as the classical theory of the lender of last resort, those rule stressed (1) protecting the aggregate money stock, not individual institutions, (2)...

This paper studies the effects of deposit insurance on bank behavior using individual bank data from Kansas in the 1920s. Kansas banks were severely stressed by the collapse of agricultural prices in 1920 and resulting increase in farm mortgage defaults. Because membership in the state deposit...

The trend toward greater provision of payments services by nonbank providers raises a question for regulators: What if these nonbank institutions suffer unfavorable balances or experience a run? The authors of this article look to the Panic of 1907 as an example of how private market...