The discount window has been under attack recently as a costly and unnecessary tool of policy. This paper argues that the primary role of the discount window should be to provide occasional, temporary support to particular financial markets during localized financial crises. The benefits of the...

Limitations on bank consolidation and branching in the United States at an early date effectively limited the scope of commercial banks and their involvement in financing large-scale industry, and increased information and transaction costs of issuing securities. In contrast, German industry was...

This paper begins by developing a framework for price and interest rate determination under suspension of convertibility during the national banking period. The model is applied to interpret unanticipated price level shocks and expected deflation during the period of green back inconvertibility(...