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Within countries, individual state-run banks’ lending correlates with prior money growth; similar private-sector banks’ lending does not. Aggregate credit and investment growth correlate with prior money growth more where banking systems are more state-run. Size and liquidity differences between state-run and private-sector banks do not drive these results; further tests discount broad classes of alternative explanations. Tests exploiting heterogeneity in political pressure on state-run banks associated with privatizations and elections suggest a command-and-control pseudo-monetary policy channel: changes in money growth, perhaps reflecting political pressure on the central bank, change banks’ lending constraints; political pressure actually changes state-run banks’ lending. This paper was accepted by Tomasz Piskorski, finance.

The financial crisis that began in 2007 in the United States swept the world, producing substantial bank failures and forcing unprecedented state aid for the crippled global financial system. Bringing together three leading financial economists to provide an international perspective,Balancing the Banksdraws critical lessons from the causes of the crisis and proposes important regulatory reforms, including sound guidelines for the ways in which distressed banks might be dealt with in the future. While some recent policy moves go in the right direction, others, the book argues, are not sufficient to prevent another crisis. The authors show the necessity of anadaptiveprudential regulatory system that can better address financial innovation. Stressing the numerous and complex challenges faced by politicians, finance professionals, and regulators, and calling for reinforced international coordination (for example, in the treatment of distressed banks), the authors put forth a number of principles to deal with issues regarding the economic incentives of financial institutions, the impact of economic shocks, and the role of political constraints. Offering a global perspective,Balancing the Banksshould be read by anyone concerned with solving the current crisis and preventing another such calamity in the future.

We develop a structural empirical model of the US banking sector. Insured depositors and run-prone uninsured depositors choose between differentiated banks. Banks compete for deposits and endogenously default. The estimated demand for uninsured deposits declines with banks' financial distress, which is not the case for insured deposits. We calibrate the supply side of the model. The calibrated model possesses multiple equilibria with bank-run features, suggesting that banks can be very fragile. We use our model to analyze proposed bank regulations. For example, our results suggest that a capital requirement below 18 percent can lead to significant instability in the banking system.

This paper presents a new database on the timing of systemic banking crises and policy responses to resolve them. The database covers the universe of systemic banking crises for the period 1970-2007, with detailed data on crisis containment and resolution policies for 42 crisis episodes, and also includes data on the timing of currency crises and sovereign debt crises. The database extends and builds on the Caprio, Klingebiel, Laeven, and Noguera (2005) banking crisis database, and is the most complete and detailed database on banking crises to date.

Almost every country in the world has sophisticated systems to prevent banking crises. Yet such crises--and the massive financial and social damage they can cause--remain common throughout the world. Does deposit insurance encourage depositors and bankers to take excessive risks? Are banking regulations poorly designed? Or are banking regulators incompetent? Jean-Charles Rochet, one of the world's leading authorities on banking regulation, argues that the answer in each case is \"no.\" In Why Are There So Many Banking Crises?, he makes the case that, although many banking crises are precipitated by financial deregulation and globalization, political interference often causes--and almost always exacerbates--banking crises. If, for example, political authorities are allowed to pressure banking regulators into bailing out banks that should be allowed to fail, then regulation will lack credibility and market discipline won't work. Only by insuring the independence of banking regulators, Rochet says, can market forces work and banking crises be prevented and minimized. In this important collection of essays, Rochet examines the causes of banking crises around the world in recent decades, focusing on the lender of last resort; prudential regulation and the management of risk; and solvency regulations. His proposals for reforms that could limit the frequency and severity of banking crises should interest a wide range of academic economists and those working for central and private banks and financial services authorities.

Throughout history, rich and poor countries alike have been lending, borrowing, crashing--and recovering--their way through an extraordinary range of financial crises. Each time, the experts have chimed, \"this time is different\"--claiming that the old rules of valuation no longer apply and that the new situation bears little similarity to past disasters. With this breakthrough study, leading economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff definitively prove them wrong. Covering sixty-six countries across five continents, This Time Is Different presents a comprehensive look at the varieties of financial crises, and guides us through eight astonishing centuries of government defaults, banking panics, and inflationary spikes--from medieval currency debasements to today's subprime catastrophe. Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, leading economists whose work has been influential in the policy debate concerning the current financial crisis, provocatively argue that financial combustions are universal rites of passage for emerging and established market nations. The authors draw important lessons from history to show us how much--or how little--we have learned.

In 2012, Ben Bernanke, chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, gave a series of lectures about the Federal Reserve and the 2008 financial crisis, as part of a course at George Washington University on the role of the Federal Reserve in the economy. In this unusual event, Bernanke revealed important background and insights into the central bank's crucial actions during the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Taken directly from these historic talks,The Federal Reserve and the Financial Crisisoffers insight into the guiding principles behind the Fed's activities and the lessons to be learned from its handling of recent economic challenges. Bernanke traces the origins of the Federal Reserve, from its inception in 1914 through the Second World War, and he looks at the Fed post-1945, when it began operating independently from other governmental departments such as the Treasury. During this time the Fed grappled with episodes of high inflation, finally tamed by then-chairman Paul Volcker. Bernanke also explores the period under his predecessor, Alan Greenspan, known as the Great Moderation. Bernanke then delves into the Fed's reaction to the recent financial crisis, focusing on the central bank's role as the lender of last resort and discussing efforts that injected liquidity into the banking system. Bernanke points out that monetary policies alone cannot revive the economy, and he describes ongoing structural and regulatory problems that need to be addressed. Providing first-hand knowledge of how problems in the financial system were handled,The Federal Reserve and the Financial Crisiswill long be studied by those interested in this critical moment in history.

Many empirical studies of banking crises have employed \"banking crisis\" (BC) indicators constructedusing primarily information on government actions undertaken in response to bank distress. Weformulate a simple theoretical model of a banking industry which we use to identify and constructtheory-based measures of systemic bank shocks (SBS). Using both country-level and firm-level samples, we show that SBS indicators consistently predict BC indicators based on four major BCseries that have appeared in the literature. Therefore, BC indicatorsactually measure lagged government responses to systemic bank shocks, rather than the occurrence of crises per se. We re-examine the separate impact of macroeconomic factors, bank market structure, deposit insurance, andexternal shocks on the probability of a systemic bank shocks and on the probability of governmentresponses to bank distress. The impact of these variables on the likelihood of a government responseto bank distress is totally different from that on the likelihood of a systemic bank shock.Disentangling the effects of systemic bank shocks and government responses turns out to be crucial inunderstanding the roots of bank fragility. Many findings of a large empirical literature need to be re-assessed and/or re-interpreted.