Responding to a Shadow Banking Crisis: The Lessons of 1763

In August 1763, northern Europe experienced a financial crisis with numerous parallels to the 2008 Lehman episode. The crisis affected merchant banks that were funded by short‐term credit instead of deposits. We use archival data to show that these “shadow” banks suffered a sudden loss of funding after the failure of a major bank. The central bank at the hub of the crisis, the Bank of Amsterdam, responded by broadening the range of collateral it accepted. The data also show how this emergency liquidity helped to contain the crisis, by preventing the collapse of at least two other major banks.