"Describes the economic, political and legal antecedents of financial crises in the western market economies. By describing how these events developed in the past and how the markets can be used to gauge the threat of future contagion, the book provides a roadmap for how we can avoid financial...

How should regulators design effective emergency lending facilities to mitigate stigma during a financial crisis? I explore this question using data from an unexpected disclosure of partial lists of banks that secretly borrowed from the lender of last resort during the Great Depression. I find...

Fighting financial crises: learning from the past -- The New York Clearing House Association -- The start of a panic -- What the New York Clearing House did during National Vanking Era panics -- Information production and suppression and emergency liquidity -- "Too big to fail" before the Fed --...

Introduction -- The legacy of Napoleon: embargo, war, and peace -- Three revolutions: market, transportation, corporation -- Volcano weather -- Alabama fever: "I must go West and plant" -- Bank expansion: "frothy bubbles" -- Bank contraction: "the axe must be applied to the root of the evil" --...