Berlin, Freie University, Diss., 2005. / Dateiformat: zip, Dateien im PDF-Format.

Bien que le xxe siècle fût faste pour la monarchie britannique, la fin de siècle est le théâtre de révélations embarrassantes et de nombreux troubles matrimoniaux au sein de la Famille royale. L'appui à la monarchie semble précaire et l'institution doit prendre un nouveau tournant. Le mémoire vise à cerner les modalités d'appui à l'institution au sortir de ces années troubles, soit de 2000 à 2010. La démonstration s'articule autour d'événements marquants du début du siècle (jubilé d'or de la Reine, décès de la Reine Mère, remariage du Prince Charles, etc.) et valide diverses théories quant à l'appui des Britanniques à la monarchie. Dans le cadre du mémoire, trois théories sont ainsi validées à divers degrés : la Imperial/Ceremonial Monarchy (Cannadine et Zeigler), la Family Monarchy (Bagehot) et la Welfare Monarchy (Proshaska).

This dissertation analyzes the emergence of the Austro-Hungarian Bank (OeUB) as a modern lender of last resort (LLR) between 1868 and 1914. In order to evaluate policy responses to specific periods of financial distress, an in-depth knowledge of the context and dynamics at hand is indispensable. Chapter I sets the groundwork for this dissertation. It shows that bank failures during the Austro-Hungarian crisis of 1873 followed mainly from the break-down of a large repo market on the Viennese stock exchange. Credit institutions granted repo loans against securities that turned into highly illiquid and depreciated collateral. Banks that were forced to sell repossessed collateral in response to heavy funding withdrawals had to write-off substantial portions of their repo portfolios and thus incurred heavy losses. This chapter reinterprets the Austro-Hungarian crisis of 1873 as a historical "run on repo". It is the first study to examine a historical repo market crisis using microdata. I use semi-parametric survival analysis as well as stratification techniques new to the literature on bank distress to identify the causes of bank failures. Bank failures in 1873 did not spring from a pure liquidity problem, nor did they derive from a simple solvency shock. The complex roots of bank distress in 1873 posed difficult questions for policy-makers who needed to decide whether and how to intervene. Although central banks may be first-best candidates for the role of a LLR, they can also face constraints which obviate an elastic supply of liquidity during crises. Some of these constraints may be ideational, institutional or technical. Others are driven by market characteristics: quantity rationing can be the result of asymmetric information problems in financial markets. In Chapter II, I study a historical experiment implemented to overcome the specter of a credit rationing LLR during the Austro-Hungarian crisis of 1873. I explore bank-level information on treatment by a LLR mechanism designed as a public-private partnership between the central bank and market players. Drawing on inverse probability weighted regression adjustment (IPWRA) to tease out the causal effect of liquidity support, I show that this unconventional LLR was effective in mitigating bank distress: it worked as a remedy for the under-provision of a good particularly desirable in times of crises central bank liquidity. No matter how successful it is in calming financial distress and independently of the concrete form it takes, the LLR always comes at a cost. Moral hazard is a central issue in the literature on last resort lending. In Chapter III, I provide a new explanation for how central banks dealt with moral hazard historically. I focus on one specific component of central banks' risk frameworks: credit limits for discount window customers. I argue that credit limits as operationalized by the Austro-Hungarian Bank (OeUB) after 1878 constituted the backbone of an early form of microprudential regulation that was designed to check moral hazard in normal times. Credit limits empowered the Austro-Hungarian Bank to enforce minimum liquidity and capital standards for its counterparties at the discount window. Rather than contradicting the tenet of free lending in times of distress, credit limits functioned as "contingent rules": enforced in normal times, limits were increased or lifted during liquidity crises perceived as exogenous. Moreover, even during crises, the Bank did not simply relax limits for all credit institutions: it differentiated between banks depending on their fundamentals prior to the crisis. Chapter III provides the first economic interpretation and empirical analysis of the credit limit frameworks employed by central banks in the past.

Germany’s position of power within the European Union disguises how impacted the German economy was by the 2008 Financial Crisis and Europe’s subsequent Sovereign Debt Crisis. Two of Germany’s major banks-Commerzbank and Bayerische Landesbank- suffered major losses and required emergency liquidity assistance (ELA) to survive. Walter Bagehot wrote the theory underpinning lenders of last resort (LLRs) in 1873 but how has the development of systemically important banks affected the usefulness of Bagehot’s theory? This paper aims to explain why Germany is in need of updated LLR recommendations through an analysis of the ELA Germany at large, Commerzbank and Bayerische Landesbank received. It also aims to empirically prove the stigma and public distrust of ELA through a regression of Commerzbank’s daily stock returns using an augmented Fama/French model. I find that Bagehot’s theory and recommendations are out of date for our current global financial sector. I cannot empirically prove any stigma or public distrust of Commerzbank, there is no relationship between Commerzbank stock returns and the augmented Fama/French factors.

The aim of this thesis is to document the importance of liquidity resources of central banks during banking panics and financial crises and analysis of the development of LLR function. We examined three historical examples: the banking panic of 1866, the Great Depression and the current financial crisis, and we focused on the interaction between the demand for liquidity on the one hand and the supply of liquidity by central banks on the other. On the wide historical background we also analysed the changes in the function of LLR. We present that a restrictive monetary policy during financial market distortions may lead to further disturbances and cause serious recession. The analysis of the BoE during 1866 and of the FED between 2007 and 2009, on the contrary shows that the expansionary stance and considerably endogenous liquidity supply are able to reduce financial market's distortions and mitigate possible recession. Analysis of FED's reaction also indicated that should the LLR remain efficient, central banks must expand their instruments portfolio.

This dissertation analyses the idea that parliament controls public money in parliamentary constitutional systems of government. That analysis proceeds through an historical and contemporary examination of the way legal practices distribute authority over public money between different institutions of government. The legislative and judicial practices concerning taxation, public expenditure, sovereign borrowing, and the government financing activities of central banks are selected for close attention. The contemporary analysis focuses on the design and operation of those legal practices in the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth of Australia, in the context of the boom-bust-recovery economic conditions experienced between 2005 and 2016. The dissertation's ultimate claims are explanatory: that "parliamentary control" is a poor explanation of the distribution of financial authority in parliamentary systems of government and should be jettisoned in favour of an idea of "parliamentary ratification". An empirically engaged methodology is adopted throughout the dissertation and (historical and contemporary) public sector financial data enrich the legal analysis. The dissertation acknowledges the impact of, but remains agnostic between, different economic and political perspectives on fiscal discipline and public financial administration. The dissertation makes a number of original contributions. It provides a detailed examination of the historical development, legal operation and constitutional significance of annual appropriation legislation, and the legal regimes governing sovereign borrowing and monetary finance. It also analyses the way that law interacts with government behaviour in situations of economic emergencies (focusing on the Bank of England's public financing activities since 2008), and the institutional and doctrinal obstacles facing judicial involvement in disputes concerning public finance (focusing on the Australian judiciary's recent engagements with public expenditure legislation).