Eligibility to the Central Bank in Times of Crises: Evidence from France, 1863–1890
利用19世纪法国农业疫情导致非农业违约增加的自然实验，研究发现中央银行将贴现窗口资格扩大到任何安全资产或偿付能力良好的代理人，能更有效地缓解经济危机，且央行分支机构的设立显著降低了违约增幅。
We provide empirical evidence that central banks can mitigate economic crises more efficiently when they extend eligibility for their discount facility to any safe asset or solvent agent. Nineteenth-century France serves as a case study to circumvent endogeneity. Following 1863, an agricultural pandemic increased defaults outside agriculture. We exploit specificities of the discount window to create exogenous variation in central bank access. Regressions show that while the demand shock brought about by the pandemic led to an increase in defaults outside agriculture by 20 percent, this effect was significantly reduced whenever a branch office of the central bank was present.