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The Crisis of 1866

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Abstract

The collapse of Overend Gurney and the ensuing Crisis of 1866 was a turning point in British financial history. The achievement of relative stability was due to the Bank of England’s willingness to offer generous assistance to the market in a crisis, combined with an elaborate system for maintaining the quality of bills in the market. We suggest that the Bank bolstered the resilience of the money market by monitoring leverage-building by money market participants and threatening exclusion from the discount window. When the Bank refused to bailout Overend Gurney in 1866 there was panic in the market. The Bank responded by lending freely and raising the Bank rate to very high levels. The new policy was crucial in allowing for the establishment of sterling as an international currency.

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  • Marc Flandreau & Stefano Ugolini, 2014. "The Crisis of 1866," IHEID Working Papers 10-2014, Economics Section, The Graduate Institute of International Studies.
    • Handle: RePEc:gii:giihei:heidwp10-2014
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    1. Accominotti, Olivier, 2012. "London Merchant Banks, the Central European Panic, and the Sterling Crisis of 1931," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 72(1), pages 1-43, March.
    2. Marc Flandreau & Stefano Ugolini, 2011. "Where it all began: lending of last resort and the Bank of England during the Overend-Gurney panic of 1866," Working Paper 2011/03, Norges Bank.
    3. Bordo,Michael D. & Roberds,William (ed.), 2013. "The Origins, History, and Future of the Federal Reserve," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107013728, November.
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    5. Stefano Ugolini, 2011. "Foreign exchange reserve management in the 19th century: The National Bank of Belgium in the 1850s," Working Paper 2011/07, Norges Bank.
    6. Vincent Bignon & Marc Flandreau & Stefano Ugolini, 2009. "Bagehot for beginners: The making of lending of last resort operations in the mid-19th century," Working Paper 2009/22, Norges Bank.
    7. Guillermo A. Calvo, 1998. "CAPITAL FLOWS AND CAPITAL-MARKET CRISES: The Simple Economics of Sudden Stops," Journal of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 1(1), pages 35-54, November.
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    10. Stefano Ugolini, 2012. "Foreign Exchange Reserve Management in the Nineteenth Century: The National Bank of Belgium in the 1850s," Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Banking and Financial Institutions, in: Anders Ögren & Lars Fredrik Øksendal (ed.), The Gold Standard Peripheries, chapter 6, pages 107-129, Palgrave Macmillan.
    11. Marc Flandreau & Stefano Ugolini, 2013. "Where It All Began: Lending of Last Resort and Bank of England Monitoring During the Overend-Gurney Panic of 1866," Post-Print hal-01293916, HAL.
    12. Stefano Ugolini, 2010. "The international monetary system, 1844-1870: Arbitrage, efficiency, liquidity," Working Paper 2010/23, Norges Bank.
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    1. Calomiris, Charles W. & Flandreau, Marc & Laeven, Luc, 2016. "Political foundations of the lender of last resort: A global historical narrative," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 28(C), pages 48-65.
    2. Clemens Jobst & Kilian Rieder, 2016. "Principles, circumstances and constraints: the Nationalbank as lender of last resort from 1816 to 1931," Monetary Policy & the Economy, Oesterreichische Nationalbank (Austrian Central Bank), issue 3, pages 140-162.
    3. Stefano Ugolini, 2014. "Comment on: “Floating a “lifeboat”: The Banque de France and the crisis of 1889” by P.C. Hautcoeur, A. Riva, and E.N. White," Post-Print hal-01293759, HAL.
    4. Anson, Mike & Bholat, David & Kang, Miao & Thomas, Ryland, 2017. "The Bank of England as lender of last resort: new historical evidence from daily transactional data," Bank of England working papers 691, Bank of England.
    5. Frederic S. Mishkin & Eugene White, 2014. "Unprecedented actions: the Federal Reserve’s response to the global financial crisis in historical perspective," Globalization Institute Working Papers 209, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
    6. del Río, Fernando & Lores, Francisco-Xavier, 2023. "Accounting for Spanish economic development 1850-2019," MPRA Paper 116025, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Laurence Alan Krause, 2019. "Walter Bagehot’s Lombard Street: An Interpretation," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 51(4), pages 572-580, December.
    8. del Río, Fernando & Lores, Francisco-Xavier, 2023. "Accounting for spanish economic development 1850–2019," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 121(C).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Bagehot; Bank of England; Lending of last resort; Supervision; Moral hazard; Discount; Overend Gurney Panic; Baring.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies
    • G01 - Financial Economics - - General - - - Financial Crises
    • N13 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations - - - Europe: Pre-1913

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