At the heart of both the modern shadow banking system and the 19th century banking system described by Walter Bagehot is the wholesale money market, with the central bank providing a liquidity backstop. We characterize shadow banking as “money market funding of capital market lending” and...

Nineteenth-century British economists Henry Thornton and Walter Bagehot established the classical rules of behavior for a central bank, acting as lender of last resort, seeking to avert panics and crises: Lend freely (to temporarily illiquid but solvent borrowers only) against the security of...

The paper analyses in light of Austrian and Keynesian economic theory the impact of conventional and unconventional monetary policies as therapies for financial crises. It compares the financial market stabilization measures of the Federal Reserve System and the European System of Central Banks...

We study the Chinese experience and provide evidence that central banks can play an active role in safeguarding financial stability. The narrative approach is used to disentangle macropudential policy actions from monetary actions. We show that reserve requirements, window guidance, supervisory...

The European Central Bank (ECB) took many measures to combat the eurozone’s rolling financial crisis. For providing desperately scarce dollars to eurozone banks, the ECB relied on the U.S. Federal Reserve. Using a novel econometric framework, we identify financial markets’ response to the...

This paper contributes to the debate on the macroeconomic effectiveness of expansionary non-standard monetary policy measures in a regulated banking environment. Based on an estimated DSGE model, we explore the interactions between central bank asset purchases and bank capital-based financial...

It is well known that quantitative credit restrictions, rather than Bagehot-style ‘free lending' constituted the standard response to financial crises in the early days of central banking. But why did central banks in the past frequently restrict the supply of loans during financial crises? In...

It is a stylised fact in the fields of economic growth theory and economic history that innovation is the engine of economic growth. Like the technological innovations, innovations in the financial sector are expected to change all aspects of economic activity, bringing about a greater...

Central banks responded with exceptional liquidity support during the financial crisis to prevent a systemic meltdown. They broadened their tool kit and extended liquidity support to nonbanks and key financial markets. Many want central banks to embrace this expanded role as “market maker of...