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Liberty Street Economics
28 posts on "Economic History"June 17, 2020
Did State Reopenings Increase Social Interactions?
Social distancing—avoiding nonessential movement and largely staying at home—is seen as key to limiting the spread of COVID-19. To promote social distancing, over forty states imposed shelter-in-place or stay-at-home orders, closing nonessential businesses, banning large gatherings, and encouraging citizens to stay home. Over the course of the last month, virtually all of these states have reopened. However, these reopenings were preceded by a spontaneous increase in mobility and decline in social distancing. Did the reopenings decrease social distancing, or did it ratify ex post what was already going to take place? In this post, we will investigate this question using an event study methodology and demonstrate that reopenings probably have caused a large decline in social distancing, even after accounting for the trends already in place at the time of reopening.
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Posted by Blog Author at 7:00 AM in Crisis, Economic History, Expectations, Pandemic | Permalink | Comments (0)April 06, 2020
How the Fed Managed the Treasury Yield Curve in the 1940s
The coronavirus pandemic has prompted the Federal Reserve to pledge to purchase Treasury securities and agency mortgage-backed securities in the amount needed to support the smooth market functioning and effective transmission of monetary policy to the economy. But some market participants have questioned whether something more might not be required, including possibly some form of direct yield curve control. In the first half of the 1940s the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) sought to manage the level and shape of the Treasury yield curve. In this post, we examine what can be learned from the FOMC’s efforts of seventy-five years ago.
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Posted by Blog Author at 7:00 AM in Economic History, Fed Funds, Federal Reserve, Financial Markets, Fiscal Policy, FOMC, Pandemic, Treasury | Permalink | Comments (0)April 02, 2020
The Value of Opacity in a Banking Crisis
During moments of heightened economic uncertainty, authorities often need to decide on how much information to disclose. For example, during crisis periods, we often observe regulators limiting access to bank‑level information with the goal of restoring the public's confidence in banks. Thus, information management often plays a central role in ending financial crises. Despite the perceived importance of managing information about individual banks during a financial crisis, we are not aware of any empirical work that quantifies the effect of such policies. In this blog post, we highlight results from our recent working paper, demonstrating that in a crisis, a policy of suppressing information about banks' balance sheets has a significant and positive effect on deposits.
Continue reading "The Value of Opacity in a Banking Crisis" »
Posted by Blog Author at 7:00 AM in Economic History, Financial Institutions, Financial Markets, Pandemic | Permalink | Comments (0)March 27, 2020
Fight the Pandemic, Save the Economy: Lessons from the 1918 Flu
The COVID-19 outbreak has sparked urgent questions about the impact of pandemics, and associated countermeasures, on the real economy. Policymakers are in uncharted territory, with little guidance on what the expected economic fallout will be and how the crisis should be managed. In this blog post, we use insights from a recent research paper to discuss two sets of questions. First, what are the real economic effects of a pandemic—and are these effects temporary or persistent? Second, how does the local public health response affect the economic severity of the pandemic? In particular, do non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) such as social distancing have economic costs, or do policies that slow the spread of the pandemic also reduce its economic severity?
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Posted by Blog Author at 5:18 PM in Balance of Payments, Crisis, Economic History, Pandemic, Recession | Permalink | Comments (3)February 26, 2020
Did Subprime Borrowers Drive the Housing Boom?
Editor’s note: When this post was first published, the chart labels for “Non-Boom Counties” were incorrect; the labels have been corrected. (February 26, 12:00 pm)
The role of subprime mortgage lending in the U.S. housing boom of the 2000s is hotly debated in academic literature. One prevailing narrative ascribes the unprecedented home price growth during the mid-2000s to an expansion in mortgage lending to subprime borrowers. This post, based on our recent working paper, “Villains or Scapegoats? The Role of Subprime Borrowers in Driving the U.S. Housing Boom,” presents evidence that is inconsistent with conventional wisdom. In particular, we show that the housing boom and the subprime boom occurred in different places.
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Posted by Blog Author at 7:00 AM in Banks, Central Bank, Credit, Crisis, Economic History, Financial Institutions, Financial Markets, Household, Household Finance, Housing, Mortgages, Recession | Permalink | Comments (8)September 23, 2019
Once Upon a Time in the Banking Sector: Historical Insights into Banking Competition
How does competition among banks affect credit growth and real economic growth? In addition, how does it affect financial stability? In this blog post, we derive insights into this important set of questions from novel data on the U.S. banking system during the nineteenth century.
Posted by Blog Author at 7:00 AM in Banks, Crisis, Economic History, Financial Institutions, Financial Intermediation | Permalink | Comments (0)November 19, 2018
"Skin in the Game," Depositor Discipline, and Bank Risk Taking
In a previous post, we argued that double liability for bank owners might not limit their risk taking, despite the extra “skin in the game,” if it also weakens depositor discipline of banks. This post, drawing on our recent working paper, looks at the interplay of those opposing forces in the late 1920s when bank liability differed across states. We find that double liability may have reduced the outflow of deposits during the crisis, but wasn’t successful in mitigating bank risk during the boom.
Continue reading ""Skin in the Game," Depositor Discipline, and Bank Risk Taking" »
Posted by Blog Author at 7:00 AM in Banks, Economic History, Financial Intermediation, New Jersey, New York | Permalink | Comments (3)February 12, 2018
Does More "Skin in the Game" Mitigate Bank Risk-Taking?
It is widely said that a lack of “skin in the game” would distort lenders’ incentives and cause a moral hazard problem, that is, excessive risk‑taking. If so, does more skin in the game—in the form of extended liability—reduce bankers’ risk‑taking? In order to examine this question, we investigate historical data prior to the Great Depression, when bank owners’ liability for losses in the event of bank failure differed by state and primary regulator. This post describes our preliminary findings.
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Posted by Blog Author at 7:00 AM in Banks, Credit, Economic History, Financial Institutions, Regulation, Systemic Risk | Permalink | Comments (3)November 18, 2016
The Final Crisis Chronicle: The Panic of 1907 and the Birth of the Fed
The panic of 1907 was among the most severe we’ve covered in our series and also the most transformative, as it led to the creation of the Federal Reserve System. Also known as the “Knickerbocker Crisis,” the panic of 1907 shares features with the 2007-08 crisis, including “shadow banks” in the form high-flying, less-regulated trusts operating beyond the safety net of the time, and a pivotal “Lehman moment” when Knickerbocker Trust, the second-largest trust in the country, was allowed to fail after J.P. Morgan refused to save it.
Continue reading "The Final Crisis Chronicle: The Panic of 1907 and the Birth of the Fed" »
Posted by Blog Author at 7:00 AM in Crisis Chronicles , Economic History, Financial Institutions, Financial Markets, Regulation, Treasury | Permalink | Comments (0)July 08, 2016
Hey, Economist! Why—and When—Did the Treasury Embrace Regular and Predictable Issuance?
Few people know the Treasury market from as many angles as Ken Garbade, a senior vice president in the Money and Payments Studies area of the New York Fed’s Research Group. Ken taught financial markets at NYU’s graduate school of business for many years before heading to Wall Street to assume a position in the research department of the primary dealer division of Bankers Trust Company. At Bankers, Ken conducted relative-value research on the Treasury market, assessing how return varies relative to risk for particular Treasury securities. For a time, he also traded single-payment Treasury obligations known as STRIPS—although not especially successfully, he notes.
Posted by Blog Author at 7:00 AM in Economic History, Fed Funds, Financial Institutions, Fiscal Policy, Hey, Economist!, Treasury | Permalink | Comments (0)About the BlogLiberty Street Economics features insight and analysis from New York Fed economists working at the intersection of research and policy. Launched in 2011, the blog takes its name from the Bank’s headquarters at 33 Liberty Street in Manhattan’s Financial District.
The editors are Michael Fleming, Andrew Haughwout, Thomas Klitgaard, and Asani Sarkar, all economists in the Bank’s Research Group.
Liberty Street Economics does not publish new posts during the blackout periods surrounding Federal Open Market Committee meetings.
The views expressed are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the position of the New York Fed or the Federal Reserve System.
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