We employ a new data set comprised of disaggregate figures on clearing house loan certificate issues in New York City to document how the dominant national banks were crucial providers of temporary liquidity during the Panic of 1907. Clearing house loan certificates were extensions of credit by the New York Clearing House to its members. These certificates were transferable to other clearing house members as a form of final payment for settlement of interbank payments. The certificate issues allowed borrowing banks to maintain (and increase) loans, fulfill cash payment upon depositor withdrawal demands, and enabled gold imports, which took two to three weeks to arrive. The large, New York City national banks acted as private liquidity providers by requesting (and the New York Clearing House issuing) a volume of clearing house loan certificates in excess of their own immediate liquidity needs, in accord with their role as central reserve city banks in the national banking system.

This paper discusses different definitions of systemic risk and identifies the challenges, which regulators face in addressing this phenomenon. We conducted a systematic literature review of 4859 abstracts to categorize the various methodologies developed to measure systemic risk. In total, 60 systemic risk measures proposed post-2000 have been critically appraised to inform academics and regulators of their practical applications and model vulnerabilities. This review suggests that most of these methods focus on individual financial institutions rather than on system stability. Those methodologies directly reflect the current regulations, which aim to ensure individual institutions’ soundness. As macro-prudential regulation evolves, policy-makers face the issues of understanding contagion and how regulations should be implemented. This paper also discusses new systemic risk and regulatory challenges resulting from the current COVID-19 pandemic.

Caught between the end of the National Banking Era and the beginning of the Federal Reserve System, the crisis of 1914 provides an example of a banking panic avoided. We investigate how this outcome was achieved by examining data on the issues of Aldrich-Vreeland emergency currency and clearing house loan certificates to New York City institutions that identify the borrower and the quantity requested for each type of temporary liquidity measure. The extensive provision of temporary credit to a wide array of financial intermediaries was, in our opinion, essential to the successful alleviation of financial distress in 1914. Empirical results indicate an important role for clearing house loan certificates that is distinct from the influence of Aldrich-Vreeland emergency currency issues.