This paper provides quantitative evidence on the interbank network’s role in transmitting the Panic of 1907 across the United States. Originating in a few New York City banks and trust companies, the panic led to payment suspensions and emergency currency issuance in many cities. Data on the...

As a result of legal restrictions on branch banking, an extensive interbank system developed in the United States during the 19th century to facilitate interregional payments and flows of liquidity and credit. Vast sums moved through the interbank system to meet seasonal and other demands, but...

Governments often attempt to increase the confidence of financial market participants by making implicit or explicit guarantees of uncertain credibility. Confidence in these guarantees presumably alters the size of the financial sector, but observing the long-run consequences of failed...

We employ a new data set comprised of disaggregate figures on clearinghouse loan certificate issues in New York City to document how the dominant national banks were crucial providers of temporary liquidity during the Panic of 1907. Clearinghouse loan certificates were essentially "bridge loans"...

Fraud and irrationality are often blamed for financial manias and panics. Investor euphoria can unleash social and technological breakthroughs, but the subsequent failures can destroy value and radicalize the political sphere. Are these events random, idiosyncratic, or driven by some force? The...

This paper presents a new indicator on financial stress from 1889 to 2016 based on the reporting in five major US newspapers. This indicator provides detailed and high-frequency coverage of more than a century of financial history based on a previously untapped corpus of 35 million newspaper...

The historical record has remained incomplete as to exactly why the Ohio Life failed on August 24, 1857 and what, if any, causal connection existed between the failure and the subsequent panic. Using new information sources, we make three main contributions to the literature. First, we conduct a...

To test a model of contagion — where individuals hear some bad news and communicate it to their acquaintances, who then pass it on, leading to a market panic — requires a knowledge of the information networks of participants, something hitherto unavailable. For two panics in the !850's this...

Using a newly constructed historical dataset on the Pennsylvania state banking system, detailing the amounts of “due-froms” on a debtor-bank-by-debtor-bank basis, we investigate the effects of the Panic of 1884 and subsequent private sector-orchestrated bailout of systemically important...

Monetary historians conventionally trace the establishment of the Federal Reserve System in 1913 to the turbulence of the Panic of 1907. But why did the successful movement for creating a U.S. central bank follow the Panic of 1907 and not any earlier National Banking Era panic? The 1907 panic...