Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850) was a French thinker who did most of his writing in the last six years of his life. One of his major contributions to economic thought was his application of opportunity cost to a wide range of economic policies. The present paper uses the Bastiat approach to...

In August 2007 the United Kingdom experienced its first bank run in over 140 years. Although Northern Rock was not a particularly large bank (it was at the time ranked 7th in terms of assets) it was nevertheless a significant retail bank and a substantial mortgage lender. In fact, ten years...

The paper examines three aspects of a financial crisis of domestic origin. The first section studies the evolution of a debt-financed consumption boom supported by rising asset prices, leading to a credit crunch and fluctuations in the real economy, and, ultimately, to debt deflation. The next...

This paper reviews the Canadian and international evidence of the effectiveness of macroprudential policy measures in building resilience and mitigating financial imbalances. The analysis concludes that these measures have broadly achieved their goal of increasing the overall resilience of the...

Banks and other financial companies use securitization to redistribute risk and increase liquidity by pooling and selling assets. This paper reviews the typical set-up of a securitization and its potential benefits and risks, including the tendency to concentrate risk in positions retained by...

This monograph challenges the myth that the recent banking crisis was caused by insufficient statutory regulation of financial markets. Though it finds that statutory regulation failed, and that market participants took more risks than they should have done, it appears that statutory regulation...

We analyze how the inflow of liquidity through TARP funds in the wake of the 2007/2008 financial crisis impacted banks' interbank market activity. We show that TARP banks increased interbank market activity statistically and economically in a very significant way. Their interbank lending...

Banking-system shutdowns during contractions scar economies. Four times in the last forty years, governors suspended payments from state-insured depository institutions. Suspensions of payments in Nebraska (1983), Ohio (1985), and Maryland (1985), which were short and occurred during expansions,...

We study the effect of market liquidity on equity-collateralized funding, accounting for endogeneity. Theory suggests market liquidity can affect funding liquidity in stabilizing and destabilizing manners. Using a new proxy for equity-collateralized funding liquidity of S&P 500 stocks over the...

This chapter utilizes the social fabric matrix approach (SFM-A) to provide a detailed description of the Federal Reserve's (Fed's) daily operations and the recent financial crisis. The SFM of the Fed's operations presents the primary components- major norms, institutions, technologies- relevant...