Banking crises and government intervention

Central Banking , Free Banking , and Financial Crises

Agrowing literature explores the concept of free banking on both a theoretical and an historical basis. George Selgin (1988) sets out the theory of free banking and makes a compelling case that, despite the uniqueness of money, the forces of supply and demand are more conducive to monetary stability, correctly understood, than are the edicts of a central bank. Larry White (1984), focusing on th...

Banking bubbles and financial crises

This paper develops a tractable macroeconomic model with a banking sector in which banks face endogenous borrowing constraints. There is no uncertainty about economic fundamentals. Banking bubbles can emerge through a positive feedback loop mechanism. Changes in household confidence can cause the bubbles to burst, resulting in a financial crisis. Credit policy can mitigate economic downturns. T...

Information Management in Banking Crises∗

A regulator resolving a bank faces two audiences: depositors, who may run if they believe the regulator will not provide capital, and banks, which may take excess risk if they believe the regulator will provide capital. When the regulator’s cost of injecting capital is private information, it manages expectations by using costly signals: (i) A regulator with a low cost of injecting capital may ...

A Theory of Banking Crises

In order to protect the public's confidence in deposit money, governments usually guarantee bank deposits implicitly or through an explicit deposit insurance system. Thus bank insolvency does not induce immediate bank runs. In many episodes of banking crises, several years passed quietly after bank insolvency had occurred, with the insolvency continuing to develop under the surface, and the ras...

The Baltics - - Banking Crises Observed