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Financial Fragility and the Great Depression

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Author Info
Russell Cooper
Dean Corbae

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Abstract

We analyze a financial collapse, such as the one which occurred during the Great Depression, from the perspective of a monetary model with multiple equilibria. The economy we consider contains financial fragility due to increasing returns to scale in the intermediation process. Intermediaries provide the link between savers and firms who require working capital for production. Fluctuations in the intermediation process are driven by variations in the confidence agents place in the financial system. Our model matches quite closely the qualitative movements in some financial and real variables (the currency/deposit ratio, ex-post real interest rates, the level of intermediated activity, deflation, employment and production) during the Great Depression period.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 6094.

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Date of creation: Jul 1997
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:6094

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy

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Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:

  1. Russell Cooper & Joao Ejarque, 1995. "Financial Intermediation and The Great Depression: A Multiple Equilibrium Interpretation," NBER Working Papers 5130, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Azariadis, Costas & Smith, Bruce, 1998. "Financial Intermediation and Regime Switching in Business Cycles," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(3), pages 516-36, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  3. Diamond, Douglas W, 1984. "Financial Intermediation and Delegated Monitoring," Review of Economic Studies, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 51(3), pages 393-414, July. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. Fulghieri, Paolo & Rovelli, Riccardo, 1998. "Capital markets, financial intermediaries, and liquidity supply," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 22(9), pages 1157-1180, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  5. Cooper, Russell & John, Andrew, 1988. "Coordinating Coordination Failures in Keynesian Models," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 103(3), pages 441-63, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. Cooper, Russell & Ejarque, Joao, 1995. "Financial intermediation and the Great Depression: a multiple equilibrium interpretation," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 285-323, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  7. Satyajit Chatterjee & Russell W. Cooper & B. Ravikumar, 1993. "Strategic complementarity in business formation: aggregate fluctuations and sunspot equilibria," Working Papers 93-9, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
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  8. Bernanke, Ben & Gertler, Mark, 1989. "Agency Costs, Net Worth, and Business Fluctuations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(1), pages 14-31, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  9. Chatterjee, Satyajit & Corbae, Dean, 1992. "Endogenous Market Participation and the General Equilibrium Value of Money," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(3), pages 615-46, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  10. Boyd, John H. & Prescott, Edward C., 1986. "Financial intermediary-coalitions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 211-232, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  11. Robert Townsend, 1979. "Optimal contracts and competitive markets with costly state verification," Staff Report 45, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. [Downloadable!]
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  12. Bernanke, Ben S, 1983. "Nonmonetary Effects of the Financial Crisis in Propagation of the Great Depression," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(3), pages 257-76, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  13. Margo, Robert A, 1993. "Employment and Unemployment in the 1930s," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 7(2), pages 41-59, Spring. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  14. Hamilton, James D., 1987. "Monetary factors in the great depression," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(2), pages 145-169, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  15. Lawrence J. Christiano & Martin Eichenbaum, 1992. "Liquidity effects and the monetary transmission mechanism," Staff Report 150, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. [Downloadable!]
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  16. Freeman, Scott, 1988. "Banking as the Provision of Liquidity," Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 61(1), pages 45-64, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  17. Bryant, John, 1987. "The Paradox of Thrift, Liquidity Preference and Animal Spirits," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(5), pages 1231-35, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
Full references

Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Wouter J. den Haan & Garey Ramey & Joel Watson, 1999. "Liquidity Flows and Fragility of Business Enterprises," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1215, Cowles Foundation, Yale University. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  2. Wouter J. DenHaan, 2002. "Temporary Shocks and Unavoidable Transistions to a High-Unemployment Regime," NBER Working Papers 9349, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  3. Franklin Allen & Douglas Gale, 1999. "Financial Contagion," Levine's Working Paper Archive 2092, David K. Levine. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  4. Den Haan, Wouter, 2003. "Temporary Shocks and Unavoidable Transitions to a High-Unemployment Regime," CEPR Discussion Papers 3704, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  5. Roger Lagunoff & Stacey L. Schreft, 1998. "A Model of Financial Fragility," Game Theory and Information 9803001, EconWPA, revised 30 Apr 1998. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  6. Harold L. Cole & Lee E. Ohanian, 1999. "The Great Depression in the United States from a neoclassical perspective," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, issue Win, pages 2-24. [Downloadable!]
  7. Wouter J. den Haan, 2003. "Temporary shocks and unavoidable transitions to a high-unemployment regime," Working Paper Series 239, European Central Bank. [Downloadable!]
  8. Franklin Allen & Douglas Gale, 1998. "Financial Contagion Journal of Political Economy," Center for Financial Institutions Working Papers 98-31, Wharton School Center for Financial Institutions, University of Pennsylvania. [Downloadable!]
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