This article explains the roots of financial crises in one of the oldest and most fundamental problems of commercial law: hidden leverage. Common law courts wrestled with this problem for centuries and developed a time – tested solution: the doctrine of secret liens. If the debtor becomes...

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...

We find evidence that the runs on banks and trust companies in the Panic of 1907 were linked to the Bank of England's contractionary monetary policy actions taken in 1906 and 1907 through the medium of copper prices. Results from our VAR models and copper stockpile data support our argument that...

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...

Using an extensive high-frequency data set, we investigate the transmission of financial crisis specifically focusing on the Panic of 1907, the final severe panic of the National Banking Era (1863-1913). We trace the transmission of the crisis from New York City trust companies to the New York...

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...

If confronted with a major financial crisis in the first year (2017) of his or her first term, what should the new President do? This essay explores the history of some of the financial crises in the United States and offers lessons for the new administration to help it prepare for such events...