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The anatomy of a credit crisis: the boom and bust in farm land prices in the United States in the 1920s

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  • Rodney Ramcharan
  • Raghuram Rajan

Abstract

Does credit availability exacerbate asset price inflation? What channels could it work through? What are the long run consequences? In this paper we address these questions by examining the farm land price boom (and bust) in the United States that preceded the Great Depression. We find that credit availability likely had a direct effect on inflating land prices. Credit availability may have also amplified the relationship between the perceived improvement in fundamentals and land prices. When the perceived fundamentals soured, however, areas with higher ex ante credit availability suffered a greater fall in land prices, and experienced higher bank failure rates. Land prices stayed low for a number of decades after the bust in areas that had higher credit availability, suggesting that the effects of booms and busts induced by credit availability might be persistent. We draw lessons for regulatory policy.

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Paper provided by Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.) in its series Finance and Economics Discussion Series with number 2012-62.

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Date of creation: 2012
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Handle: RePEc:fip:fedgfe:2012-62
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Find related papers by JEL classification:
  • G01 - Financial Economics - - General - - - Financial Crises
  • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages
  • N1 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations

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Cited by:

  1. Weber, Jeremy G. & Key, Nigel, 2013. "Do Wealth Gains from Land Appreciation Cause Farmers to Expand Acreage or Buy Land?," 2014 Allied Social Science Association (ASSA) Annual Meeting, January 3-5, 2014, Philadelphia, PA 161893, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
  2. Steinar Holden, 2012. "Implications of insights from behavioral economics for macroeconomic models," Working Paper 2012/12, Norges Bank.
  3. Henderson, Jason & Kauffman, Nathan, 2013. "Farm investment and leverage cycles: will this time be different?," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, issue Q II, pages 89-114.
  4. Acharya, Viral & Naqvi, Hassan, 2012. "The seeds of a crisis: A theory of bank liquidity and risk taking over the business cycle," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(2), pages 349-366.
  5. KURASHIMA Daichi & MIZUNAGA Masashi & ODAKI Kazuhiko & WATANABE Wako, 2013. "Is Leverage a Determinant of Asset Price? Evidence from real estate transaction data," Discussion papers 13082, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
  6. Rodney Ramcharan & Skander Van den Heuvel & Stephane Verani, 2013. "From Wall Street to main street: the impact of the financial crisis on consumer credit supply," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2013-10, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
  7. Carola Moreno & Carlos Saavedra & Bárbara Ulloa, 2014. "Commodity Price Cycles and Financial Stability," Working Papers Central Bank of Chile 738, Central Bank of Chile.
  8. Ehsan U. Choudhri & Lawrence L. Schembri, 2013. "A Tale of Two Countries and Two Booms, Canada and the United States in the 1920s and the 2000s: The Roles of Monetary and Financial Stability Policies," Working Paper Series 44_13, The Rimini Centre for Economic Analysis.
  9. repec:dgr:uvatin:20130034 is not listed on IDEAS

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