This dissertation will analyse the degree to which Bank of England note issues influenced the extent of credit expansion by the British banking system during the 1819-26 business cycle. The evidence presented, both theoretical and empirical, tends to suggest that such an influence did indeed...

The collapse of Overend Gurney and the ensuing Crisis of 1866 was a turning point in British financial history. The achievement of relative stability was due to the Bank of Englandś willingness to offer generous assistance to the market in a crisis, combined with an elaborate system for...

In August 2007 the United Kingdom experienced its first bank run in over 140 years. Although Northern Rock was not a particularly large bank (it was at the time ranked 7th in terms of assets) it was nevertheless a significant retail bank and a substantial mortgage lender. In fact, ten years...

We use daily transactional ledger data from the Bank of England's Archive to test whether and to what extent the Bank of England during the mid-nineteenth century adhered to Walter Bagehot's rule that a central bank in a financial crisis should lend cash freely at a high interest rate in...

‘Global financial crisis' is an inaccurate description of the current upheaval in the world's financial markets. The initial banking crisis did not affect all countries to the same degree. Notably, while the US and UK banking systems were badly hit, those of the other two major Anglo-Saxon...

When faced with a run on a "systemically important" but insolvent bank in 1889, the Banque de France pre-emptively organized a lifeboat to ensure that depositors were protected and an orderly liquidation could proceed. To protect the Banque from losses on its lifeboat loan, a guarantee syndicate...

The paper argues that the incidence of moral hazard played a significant role in the 2007/2008 credit crunch. In particular, bank traders subjected to asymmetric compensation structures have an incentive to take excessive risks even when the bank's shareholders would prefer prudent investment....

In 1866, the largest discount house in London, Overend-Gurney, teetered on the verge of insolvency as a result of extensive loan losses. It appealed to the Bank of England, then a privately held joint-stock bank with a monopoly over note issuance, but the Bank refused to help Overend-Gurney on...

Although historians continue to debate what exactly sparked the Panic of 1825, it is clear that by December of that year, a widespread bank run had erupted, and bankers flocked to the discount window of the Bank of England. While not yet the central bank, the Bank had special legal authority...