IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedhwp/wp-2011-15.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The cost of banking panics in an age before “Too Big to Fail”

Author

Listed:
  • Benjamin Chabot

Abstract

How costly were the banking panics of the National Banking Era (1861-1913)? I combine two hand-collected data sets - the weekly statements of the New York Clearing House banks and the monthly holding period return of every stock listed on the NYSE - to estimate the cost of banking panics in an era before ?too big to fail.? The bank statements allow me to construct a hypothetical insurance contract which would have allowed investors to insure against sudden deposit withdrawals and the cross-section of stock returns allow us to draw inferences about the marginal utility during panic states. Panics were costly. The cross-section of gilded-age stock returns imply investors would have willingly paid a 14% annual premium above actuarial fair value to insure $100 against unexpected deposit withdrawals The implied consumption of stock investors suggests that the consumption loss associated with National Banking Era bank runs was far more costly than the consumption loss from stock market crashes.

Suggested Citation

  • Benjamin Chabot, 2011. "The cost of banking panics in an age before “Too Big to Fail”," Working Paper Series WP-2011-15, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedhwp:wp-2011-15
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.chicagofed.org/digital_assets/publications/working_papers/2011/wp2011_15.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Miron, Jeffrey A, 1986. "Financial Panics, the Seasonality of the Nominal Interest Rate, and theFounding of the Fed," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(1), pages 125-140, March.
    2. Douglas W. Diamond & Philip H. Dybvig, 2000. "Bank runs, deposit insurance, and liquidity," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, vol. 24(Win), pages 14-23.
    3. Sandro Brusco & Fabio Castiglionesi, 2007. "Liquidity Coinsurance, Moral Hazard, and Financial Contagion," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 62(5), pages 2275-2302, October.
    4. Allen, Franklin & Gale, Douglas, 1997. "Financial Markets, Intermediaries, and Intertemporal Smoothing," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(3), pages 523-546, June.
    5. Chari, V V & Jagannathan, Ravi, 1988. " Banking Panics, Information, and Rational Expectations Equilibrium," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 43(3), pages 749-761, July.
    6. Douglas W. Diamond & Raghuram G. Rajan, 2001. "Liquidity Risk, Liquidity Creation, and Financial Fragility: A Theory of Banking," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 109(2), pages 287-327, April.
    7. Hansen, Lars Peter & Jagannathan, Ravi, 1997. "Assessing Specification Errors in Stochastic Discount Factor Models," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(2), pages 557-590, June.
    8. Hansen, Lars Peter & Jagannathan, Ravi, 1991. "Implications of Security Market Data for Models of Dynamic Economies," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 99(2), pages 225-262, April.
    9. Douglas W. Diamond & Raghuram G. Rajan, 2006. "Money in a Theory of Banking," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(1), pages 30-53, March.
    10. Charles W. Calomiris & Gary Gorton, 1991. "The Origins of Banking Panics: Models, Facts, and Bank Regulation," NBER Chapters, in: Financial Markets and Financial Crises, pages 109-174, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Gorton, Gary, 1988. "Banking Panics and Business Cycles," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 40(4), pages 751-781, December.
    12. R. Glenn Hubbard, 1991. "Financial Markets and Financial Crises," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number glen91-1, July.
    13. Bryant, John, 1980. "A model of reserves, bank runs, and deposit insurance," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 4(4), pages 335-344, December.
    14. Wicker,Elmus, 2000. "Banking Panics of the Gilded Age," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521770231, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Qian Chen & Christoffer Koch & Gary Richardson & Padma Sharma, 2020. "Payments Crises and Consequences," Research Working Paper RWP 20-10, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
    2. Benjamin Chabot & Gabe Herman, 2013. "A History of Large-Scale Asset Purchases before the Federal Reserve," Economic Perspectives, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, issue Q IV, pages 140-152.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Committee, Nobel Prize, 2022. "Financial Intermediation and the Economy," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 2022-2, Nobel Prize Committee.
    2. Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham & Tanju Yorulmazer, 2010. "Liquidity, Bank Runs, and Bailouts: Spillover Effects During the Northern Rock Episode," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 37(2), pages 83-98, June.
    3. Assaf Razin & Itay Goldstein, 2012. "Review Of Theories of Financial Crises," 2012 Meeting Papers 214, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    4. Goldstein, Itay & Razin, Assaf, 2015. "Three Branches of Theories of Financial Crises," Foundations and Trends(R) in Finance, now publishers, vol. 10(2), pages 113-180, 30.
    5. Fungacova, Zuzana & Turk, Rima & Weill, Laurent, 2021. "High liquidity creation and bank failures," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 57(C).
    6. Hoag, Christopher, 2005. "Deposit drains on "interest-paying" banks before financial crises," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 42(4), pages 567-585, October.
    7. Dwyer Jr., Gerald P. & Samartín, Margarita, 2009. "Why do banks promise to pay par on demand?," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 5(2), pages 147-169, June.
    8. Douglas W. Diamond & Raghuram G. Rajan, 2005. "Liquidity Shortages and Banking Crises," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(2), pages 615-647, April.
    9. Franklin Allen & Douglas Gale, 2003. "Financial Fragility, Liquidity and Asset Prices," Center for Financial Institutions Working Papers 01-37, Wharton School Center for Financial Institutions, University of Pennsylvania.
    10. Claudio Borio, 2011. "Rediscovering the Macroeconomic Roots of Financial Stability Policy: Journey, Challenges, and a Way Forward," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 3(1), pages 87-117, December.
    11. Carlson, Mark, 2005. "Causes of bank suspensions in the panic of 1893," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 56-80, January.
    12. Iyer, Rajkamal & Peydró, José-Luis, 2011. "Interbank contagion at work: Evidence from a natural experiment," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 24(4), pages 1337-1377.
    13. Bouwman, Christa H. S., 2013. "Liquidity: How Banks Create It and How It Should Be Regulated," Working Papers 13-32, University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School, Weiss Center.
    14. Fungáčová, Zuzana & Turk-Ariss, Rima & Weill, Laurent, 2013. "Does excessive liquidity creation trigger bank failures?," BOFIT Discussion Papers 2/2013, Bank of Finland, Institute for Economies in Transition.
    15. repec:zbw:bofitp:2013_002 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Zhu, Haibin, 2005. "Bank runs, welfare and policy implications," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 1(3), pages 279-307, April.
    17. Gorton, Gary & Huang, Lixin, 2006. "Bank panics and the endogeneity of central banking," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(7), pages 1613-1629, October.
    18. Schnabel, Isabel, 2002. "The Great Banks` Depression - Deposit Withdrawals in the German Crisis of 1931," Sonderforschungsbereich 504 Publications 03-11, Sonderforschungsbereich 504, Universität Mannheim;Sonderforschungsbereich 504, University of Mannheim.
    19. Acharya, Viral & Yorulmazer, Tanju, 2003. "Information Contagion and Inter-Bank Correlation in a Theory of Systemic Risk," CEPR Discussion Papers 3743, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    20. Honohan, Patrick, 1999. "A model of bank contagion through lending," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 8(2), pages 147-163, June.
    21. Franklin Allen & Elena Carletti, 2013. "Financial Markets, Institutions and Liquidity," RBA Annual Conference Volume (Discontinued), in: Alexandra Heath & Matthew Lilley & Mark Manning (ed.),Liquidity and Funding Markets, Reserve Bank of Australia.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    National Bank Act; Financial crises;

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedhwp:wp-2011-15. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Lauren Wiese (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbchus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.