This paper examines the origins and early performance of the Federal Reserve as lender of last resort. The Fed was established to overcome the problems of the National Banking era, in particular an "inelastic" currency and the absence of an effective lender of last resort. As conceived by Paul...

This paper examines the origins and early performance of the Federal Reserve as lender of last resort. The Fed was established to overcome the problems of the National Banking era, in particular an “inelastic” currency and the absence of an effective lender of last resort. As conceived by...

This paper examines the impacts of banking market structure and regulation on economic growth using new data on banking market concentration and manufacturing industry-level growth rates for U.S. states during 1899–1929—a period when the manufacturing sector was expanding rapidly and...

The shares of total U.S. banking assets and deposits held by the very largest banking organizations have increased markedly over the past 25 years, while the shares held by small “community” banks have declined. Advances in information technology may have reduced the advantages of small...

Many people want to put size limits on “too big to fail” banks, given their risks to the broader economy. Such limits, however, could raise the cost of providing banking services by preventing banks from exploiting economies of scale.

Conventional wisdom holds that if policymakers are too focused on controlling inflation, then employment, output growth and financial stability will suffer. But the conventional wisdom is wrong, according to the data.

Just because there was a boom in the housing market doesn't mean there will be a bust. But if the decline in prices that has hit some markets spreads across the country, the overall economy could suffer on multiple levels.

In the cover story, find out why some bankers are encouraging Congress to raise the ceiling for insurance on deposits to $130,000 from $100,000 per account. Opponents point out that in the wake of the last increase, the S&L crisis occurred.

It's not the total number of people that should be causing worry, but the number of retired people relative to those still working. Across the world, the ranks of retirees are swelling and the ranks of those working - and paying taxes to support retirees - are not keeping up.

The development of the microchip sparked another industrial revolution. But will this revolution yield the long-term surge in productivity that the First and Second industrial revolutions produced?