Bank Collapse and Depression

Abstract

The recurrent banking panics of the 19th century and the Great Depression of the 1930s are widely viewed as failures of our economic system. A simple version of Samuelson’s overlapping generations model is used to generate such failures of Walrasian equilibrium. The spontaneous “panics” generated involve a collapse of bank credit, causing in turn a drop in investment demand. The model suggests that both the recent technological advances in the intermediation industry and the current move towards deregulation of that industry are ominous developments.

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