Clearinghouse loan certificates as a lender of last resort

Looking across multiple panics of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this paper treats borrowing of clearinghouse loan certificates as borrowing from a lender of last resort. We evaluate individual bank use of clearinghouse loan certificates in New York City using bank balance sheet data. Bank capital ratios do not predict positive net borrowing. Lower pre-panic reserve ratios increased the probability of positive net borrowing of loan certificates. Bank borrowing behavior from a lender of last resort remained relatively constant across all three crises considered.     

Interventions in Markets with Adverse Selection: Implications for Discount Window Stigma

I study the implications for central bank discount window stigma of a workhorse model of adverse selection in financial markets. In the model, firms (banks) need to borrow to finance a productive project. There is limited liability and firms have private information about their ability to repay their debts, which gives rise to the possibility of adverse selection. The central bank can ameliorate the impact of adverse selection by lending to firms. Discount window borrowing is observable and it may be taken as a signal of firms' credit worthiness. Under some conditions, firms borrowing from the discount window may pay higher interest rates to borrow in the market, a phenomenon often associated with the presence of stigma. I discuss these and other outcomes in detail and what they suggest about the relevance of stigma as an empirical phenomenon.     

Floating a “lifeboat”: The Banque de France and the crisis of 1889

When faced with a run on a “systemically important” but insolvent bank in 1889, the Banque de France pre-emptively organized a lifeboat to ensure that depositors were protected and an orderly liquidation could proceed. To protect the Banque from losses on its lifeboat loan, a guarantee syndicate was formed penalizing those who had participated in the copper speculation that had caused the crisis bringing the bank down. Creation of the syndicate and other actions were consistent with mitigating the moral hazard from such an intervention. This episode contrasts the advice given by Bagehot to the Bank of England to counter a panic by lending freely at a high rate on good collateral, allowing insolvent institutions to fail.     

冷链物流“最后一公里”快速配送方法研究

冷链物流“最后一公里”的品质配送，对于实现全程冷链以及提升企业形象有着重要的意义。为了实现冷链物流的快速配送，本文提出了一种基于复杂网络的“最后一公里”物流配送区域划分方法。该方法构建了现实生活中物流配送的复杂网络模型，然后基于两阶段的LinkRank社区发现算法实现了物流配送区域的划分，最后建立了一套完善的物流配送体系。该体系明确了配送中转站以及配送点所覆盖的区域，这些区域所包含的社区物流关系紧密、易于配送。本文通过案例研究，验证了方法的有效性，最终方案可有效提高“最后一公里”的配送效率和降低物流成本。     

基业长青的企业本质: 一种基于广义虚拟经济视角的解释

制度经济学的企业理论在探寻企业的本质时,将企业抽象为市场的对应物,抹杀了现实中不同企业之间存在的差别(异质性),难以理解企业之间的竞争及企业是如何成长.战略管理学则倾向于重视这种差别,并以此为基点从理论上阐释了企业是如何获取并持久保持竞争优势以促进企业成长,但忽视了企业的同质性.本文则从广义虚拟经济二元价值容介态的视角...     

对后危机时代最后贷款人法律制度创新的思考

无论一种制度如何先进,与动态的社会而言,其都是一个此一时彼一时的问题。若具有相对真理性的制度意图"常青不败",那么它就必须与时俱进。虽然古典的最后贷款人制度实现了既定史命,但是金融自由化、金融电子化与国际化已从另一侧面检测着该制度的精致或拙劣。是急流勇退,还是迎难而新,这是后危机时代该制度因时而化中所必须权衡的重大问题。     

Consumption in Contemporary Capitalism: The Backward Art of Living

Western economies have undergone a significant transformation over the last half a century as they have moved away from a commitment to full employment, going from activist fiscal policy to its abandonment with the adoption of budgetary austerity. This is not because of any technical or physical incapacity to achieve full employment. Analyzing the broad macroeconomic experience of Canada and the United States in the post-WWII era, the article finds that this growing unemployment has essentially resulted from a deliberate policy choice not to stimulate sufficiently demand via fiscal measures. Learning from the experience of the Great Depression, Michal Kalecki had offered an explanation for this type of policy response in favor of rising long-term unemployment. This article recognizes the relevance and appropriateness of Kalecki's analysis and seeks to determine whether the Minskian institutional proposal for achieving effective full employment (via government as the employer of last resort) would withstand an original Kaleckian critique.     

The Federal Home Loan Bank System: The Lender of Next‐to‐Last Resort?

The Federal Home Loan Bank (FHLB) System is a large cooperatively owned government‐sponsored liquidity facility that lends predominately to U.S. depository institutions. This paper documents the significant role played by the FHLB System at the outset of the recent financial crisis and provides evidence on the uses of FHLB funding by member banks and thrifts during that time. We then compare lending activity by the FHLB System and the Federal Reserve during 2007 and 2008, discuss the types of institutions seeking government‐sponsored liquidity at various times, and identify the trade‐offs faced by borrowers eligible to tap liquidity from both facilities.     

Rejoinder to Peltzman

Since 2008, the U.S. economy has been mired in the second worst economic crisis in its history. Conceivably, massive government spending could bring the economy out of this slump as massive war spending ultimately ended the Great Depression of the 1930s. However, a far superior strategy exists: guaranteeing employment accompanied by retraining to enable all unemployed workers to become absorbed into the regular work force. Beyond ending the crisis, the superiority of this strategy is that it would institutionalize a procedure for insuring that, in an increasingly technologically dynamic and open economy, workers would possess the necessary skills for available jobs. Guaranteeing employment would also eliminate the ecological costs associated with the need to seek growth to generate employment at practically any cost. Finally, it would establish a new moral social contract, whereby everyone is granted the dignity that accompanies being a productive member of society. Welfare for those able to work could disappear, along with the degradation and humiliation accompanying it.     

The Moral Imperative and Social Rationality of Government-Guaranteed Employment and Reskilling

Unemployment exacts a high cost to its victims, not only in lost income, but also in terms of quality of life (insecurity, depression, abandoned families, divorce, suicide and poorer health). It also exacts a high cost to society in terms of lost output, foregone tax revenue, depreciating human capital, and increased costs of welfare, crime and health care. Yet modern wealthy societies have, principally for the sake of price stability and to avoid the budget costs of a full remedy, chosen to tolerate a substantial level of permanent unemployment. This article explores the moral conditions of this social choice and its rationality in terms of social welfare. It makes and develops support for two claims: society's tolerance of involuntary unemployment is morally wrong, and it is socially and economically irrational. It concludes that government should guarantee employment by serving as employer of last resort and where appropriate provide for retraining.