On September 14th 2007 the Northern Rock bank failed. The run on the bank garnered a massive amount of media and public attention, but even as the queues disappeared and the government gradually took control it was still not clear what had gone wrong. Why did people run on the bank? What does it...

The collapse of Northern Rock plc in September 2007 as a result of the financial crisis that had its origins in the sub-prime mortgage bubble in the United States focussed attention on the limited nature of governmental powers in the UK to deal with banks in distress or facing insolvency. The...

The passage of the Banking Act 2009 (UK) was a major landmark in the development of legal tools for the handling of banks in financial difficulties in the United Kingdom. The Act has emerged from over a year of economic crisis and from politically charged debates and consultations that followed...

I study the first modern global banking crisis that began in London in 1866 and provide causal evidence that financial sector disruptions can reshape international trade patterns for decades. Using newly collected archival loan records that link banks to their operations abroad, I estimate that...