An Empirical History of the United States Postal Savings System

Abstract

Any opinions and conclusions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Census Bureau not those of the National Bureau of Economic Research. The research in this paper does not use any confidential Census Bureau data.NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

Assessing the Impact of Central Bank Digital Currency on Private Banks

“…For debt to be valued in this environment, we need (R I ; R C ) ŝ(R D ) + m(R D ) b (R L ) > 0: Assume, for the moment, that R C = 1: Note that by (14) and 15 Lemma 2 implies that this expression is increasing in the deposit rate R D : Lemma 1 implies that the demand for funds by entrepreneurs is decreasing in R L : The markup conditions (21) and (22) suggest that lending and deposit rates are increasing in the policy rate R I : Hence, demand for outside assets (R I ; 1) is increasing in R I , so there is a value for R I that satis…es (R I ; 1) > 0: The interest expense associated with this interest rate policy can be …nanced with the lump-sum tax instrument; see (26). If the nonnegativity constraint on old-age consumption for poor workers binds, the burden of the tax can be diverted to other agents in the economy.…”

The U.S. Postal Savings System and the collapse of building and loan associations during the Great Depression

“…The literature on postal savings banks has focused on the patterns of usage (Kemmerer, 1917; Schewe, 1971; Sprick Schuster et al, 2020) or on postal savings' response to commercial bank failures (Davidson & Ramirez, 2016; Kuwayama, 2000; Sissman, 1936). Similarly, the literature on B&Ls has focused on their popularity at an aggregate‐level (e.g., Bodfish, 1931, 1935; Clark & Chase, 1927) or the role they played in the success of the mortgage market during the 1920s and 1930s (Courtemanche & Snowden, 2011; Fishback et al, 2013; 2019; Fishback, Troesken, et al, 2011; Fleitas et al, 2018; Rose, 2014).…”