Public Banks, Private Banks and Crisis: Banco de la Nación Argentina as Lender of Last Resort between the First World War and the Postwar Period

Andrés Regalsky () and Mariano Iglesias ()
Additional contact information
Andrés Regalsky: CONICET/ITDT, UNLuján, UNTres de Febrero
Mariano Iglesias: BCRA

Ensayos Económicos, 2015, vol. 1, issue 72, 103-138

Abstract: In 1914 the outbreak of the First World War gave place to a great commercial and financial crisis in the Argentine economy. The interruption of the external capital flows, already diminished since the Balkan’s crisis, brought about serious repercussions on the financial system, on the real estate and other connected activities, resulting in a wave of bankruptcies and huge unemployment. On the other hand, the downfall of fiscal revenues and the difficulties in the international financial markets discharged over the local market the burden of public financing. After an important recovery between 1918 and 1920, a new international crisis heavily afflicted the balance of payments, public finance and those activities previously more profitable, such as livestock. The Banco de la Nación Argentina experienced in those years its greatest expansion, and was called to perform new functions, financing both the public sector and a large range of productive activities. However, the most outstanding aspect, but less studied, was its new role in the banking system, acting as lender of last resort in different critical moments, in the manner of a Central Bank. This paper revisited such questions, with special attention to the case of the Banco Español del Río de la Plata, when the BNA rescue assumed —about 1923-24— a fuller and more massive character, trying to close the postwar cycle of disturbances.

Keywords: Argentina; private banks; public banks; banking history (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E51 E58 G21 G28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.bcra.gov.ar/Pdfs/Investigaciones/72_Regalsky.pdf Spanish version (versión en Español) (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bcr:ensayo:v:1:y:2015:i:72:p:103-138

Access Statistics for this article

Ensayos Económicos is currently edited by Germán Feldman

More articles in Ensayos Económicos from Central Bank of Argentina, Economic Research Department Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Federico Grillo ().