IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedcwp/0722.html

The National Banking System: the national bank note puzzle

Author

Listed:
  • Bruce A. Champ

Abstract

The era of the National Banking System (1863?1913) has been a puzzling one for monetary theorists and economic historians for well over a century. The puzzles associated with this period take various forms. Despite calculations of high profit rates on note issue for certain periods of the era, national banks never fully utilized their note-issuing powers. Relatedly, the behavior of interest rates during the period is also puzzling given the regime of bank note issuance put in place by the National Bank Acts. On the surface, it appears that an arbitrage condition is broken. The observed inelasticity in aggregate national bank note issue also is puzzling, particularly given the behavior of interest rates. This paper examines many of the puzzles of the national banking era and provides a summary of the current attempts to explain those puzzles.

Suggested Citation

  • Bruce A. Champ, 2007. "The National Banking System: the national bank note puzzle," Working Papers (Old Series) 0722, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedcwp:0722
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.clevelandfed.org/newsroom-and-events/publications/working-papers/working-papers-archives/2007-working-papers/wp-0722-the-national-banking-the-national-bank-note-puzzle.aspx
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bruce Champ & Bruce D. Smith & Stephen D. Williamson, 1996. "Currency Elasticity and Banking Panics: Theory and Evidence," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 29(4), pages 828-864, November.
    2. Bruce A. Champ & Scott Freeman & Warren E. Weber, 1999. "Redemption costs and interest rates under the U.S. National Banking System," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, pages 568-595.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Asaf Bernstein & Eric Hughson & Marc D. Weidenmier, 2008. "Can a Lender of Last Resort Stabilize Financial Markets? Lessons from the Founding of the Fed," NBER Working Papers 14422, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Bullard, James & Smith, Bruce D., 2003. "Intermediaries and payments instruments," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 109(2), pages 172-197, April.
    3. Antoine Martin & Cyril Monnet & Warren E. Weber, 2000. "Costly banknote issuance and interest rates under the national banking system," Working Papers 601, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    4. Antinolfi, Gaetano & Keister, Todd, 2006. "Discount Window Policy, Banking Crises, And Indeterminacy Of Equilibrium," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 10(1), pages 1-19, February.
    5. Bruce A. Champ & Neil Wallace, 2003. "Resolving the National Banking System note-issue puzzle," Working Papers (Old Series) 0316, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
    6. Jon R. Moen & Ellis W. Tallman, 2007. "Liquidity creation without a lender of last resort: clearinghouse loan certificates in the Banking Panic of 1907," FRB Atlanta Working Paper 2006-23, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
    7. Makoto (M.) Watanabe & Tarishi Matsuoka, 2019. "Banking Panics and the Lender of Last Resort in a Monetary Economy," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 19-002/V, Tinbergen Institute.
    8. Daniel Sanches, 2016. "On the Inherent Instability of Private Money," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 20, pages 198-214, April.
    9. Allen Head & Junfeng Qiu, 2007. "Elastic Money, Inflation, And Interest Rate Policy," Working Paper 1152, Economics Department, Queen's University.
    10. Chang, Chia-Ying, 2012. "When banking systems meet currencies," Working Paper Series 18620, Victoria University of Wellington, School of Economics and Finance.
    11. Larry D. Wall, 2010. "Too-big-to-fail after FDICIA," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, vol. 95(1).
    12. Chang, Roberto & Velasco, Andres, 2000. "Financial Fragility and the Exchange Rate Regime," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 92(1), pages 1-34, May.
    13. Azariadis, Costas, 2014. "Credit Policy in times of Financial Distress," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 39(PB), pages 337-345.
    14. Chang, Chia-Ying, 2012. "Can a home country benefit from FDI? A theoretical analysis," Working Paper Series 2067, Victoria University of Wellington, School of Economics and Finance.
    15. John H. Boyd & Pedro Gomis-Porqueras & Sungkyu Kwak & Bruce David Smith, 2014. "A User's Guide to Banking Crises," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 15(2), pages 800-892, November.
    16. Chao Gu & Cyril Monnet & Ed Nosal & Randall Wright, 2019. "On the Instability of Banking and Other Financial Intermediation," Working Papers 19.04, Swiss National Bank, Study Center Gerzensee.
    17. Antoine Martin, 2005. "Reconciling Bagehot with the Fed's response to September 11," Staff Reports 217, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    18. Fernando Martin & Aleksander Berentsen & David Andolfatto, 2016. "Financial Fragility in Monetary Economies," 2016 Meeting Papers 1626, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    19. Todd Keister, 2009. "Central Bank Lending and Inflation," 2009 Meeting Papers 782, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    20. Junfeng Qiu, 2011. "Bank money, aggregate liquidity, and asset prices," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 12(2), pages 295-346, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;

    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:fedcwp:0722. 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: 4D Library (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbclus.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.