Some bank reforms of the 1930s in the United States may have been overvalued. The Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 actually created new endogenous risks involving potential systemic effects. Deposit insurance failed to address the main cause of banking panics, and rather strengthened inefficient unit...

Dix économistes français démontrent que la puissance économique américaine, basée sur sa supériorité technologique, une recherche de qualité, une réactivité et un optimisme sans faille n'est pourtant pas à l'abri de ses paradoxes. Son endettement, son déficit, ses scandales...

We use the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 to study the effect of bankers on corporate boards in facilitating access to external finance. In the early twentieth century, securities underwriters commonly held directorships with American corporations; this was especially true for railroads, which...

We determine the events that cause large shocks in volatility of the DJIA index over the period 1928–2013, using a new semi-parametric test based on conditional heteroscedasticity models. We find that these large shocks can be associated with particular events (financial crashes, elections,...

After the Latin American Debt Crisis of 1982, the official response worldwide turned to minimum capital standards to promote stable banking systems. Despite their existence, however, such standards have still not prevented periodic disruptions in the banking sectors of various countries. After...

The aim of this paper is to show the strategies of the Venetian Patricians (and those from the Mainland) face to the risk. The diversifications of investments (in all the economic sectors, as agriculture, manufacture, trade, public and private finance) and the flexibility in the domestic and...

This essay aims to analyze the economic and social role of foreign (forestieri) merchants and artisans in Venice between the low middle age and the early modern time. In search of new perspectives of work, many strangers, also of different religions, came in Venice, where they organize...

Ten years ago, the global financial and economic crisis began. In 2007, the hedge fund New Century Financial as well as the banks IKB Deutsche Industriebank and North-ern Rock were the first financial institutions and hedge funds to run into difficulties as a result of having en-gaged in...

Scholars, politicians and regulators have been racking their brains over this problem since 2007, the year the financial crisis broke out. The question of whether a fi-nancial system can even be stable in the first place has also emerged. And yet if there is one thing all know, it is that there...

In this paper, I use the materials of the debate on the reliability and the utility of “business barometers” of the Twenties in order to show that the theoretical reflexions of the time could be used by economic historians as a working hypothesis to analyze the influence exerted by...