A country's financial system is internationally illiquid if its potential short-term obligations in foreign currency exceed the amount of foreign currency it can have access to in short notice. This condition may be necessary and sufficient for financial crises and/or exchange rate collapses...

Arguably, eliminating suspensions of payments--periods when banks jointly refuse to convert their liabilities into outside money or other assets--was an important impetus for creating the Federal Reserve. Friedman and Schwartz suggest that a suspension in 1930 would have decreased the severity...

During Peter Drucker’s talk entitled "Business and Management: The Changing Corporation" he discusses: joint alliances and market agreements, parent companies and their subsidiaries, changing technology and markets, seniority and Japanese companies, mutual funds and pensions, mortgages,...

Regulators collect and produce information about banks. This information helps regulators monitor the safety and soundness of the banking system, and it also helps policymakers preserve financial stability. A key issue is whether this information should be made public and, if so, to what extent....

Superseded by Working Paper 15-20. Monetary economists have long recognized a tension between the benefits of fractional reserve banking, such as the ability to undertake more profitable (long-term) investment opportunities, and the difficulties associated with fractional reserve banking, such...

This article first reviews methods of foreign exchange intervention and then presents evidence - focusing on survey results - on the mechanics of such intervention. Types of intervention, instruments, timing, amounts, motivation, secrecy and perceptions of efficacy are discussed.