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Commentary On MAY/JUNE 1998 Randall S. Kroszner is a professor in the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago. ments and liquidity provision through the Commentary interbank lending market. Randall S. Kroszner RETURNS AND THE RELATIONSHIP OF ne of the key challenges for central CLEARING AND LIQUIDITY bankers today concerns the regulation To make the case about natural mono- Oand operation of the payments system. poly, RSW begins by observing that for Faced with rapid innovation in informa- more than two decades, no competitor tion-processing and communications tech- emerged to challenge the Suffolk Bank’s nologies, central banks are struggling to note-clearing business in New England understand what role, if any, they should (see also Lake 1947). Next, the article play in the payments system of the future. examines the profitability of the Suffolk These fundamental questions have prompt- Bank for evidence of monopoly rents. ed researchers to examine how payments Since the data that would allow us to calcu- systems evolved in the period before central late returns on assets or equity do not exist, bank control, seeking insights into how pri- RSW uses data on dividend payments rela- vate alternatives might operate (e.g., Mul- tive to capital as a proxy for profitability. lineaux 1987; Gorton and Mullineaux Calomiris and Kahn (1996) used dividend 1987; Cowen and Kroszner 1989, 1990, and payment rates to compare the average prof- 1994; Selgin and White 1994; Calomiris itability of banks in Boston with those in and Kahn 1996; and Kroszner 1996 and other cities during this period and found 1997). In this spirit, Rolnick, Smith, and that banks in Boston did not pay higher Weber’s article in this issue (RSW) evalu- dividends than banks elsewhere. On ates the Suffolk System, which is perhaps average, these banks do not appear to have the most important private clearing enjoyed supernormal profits. RSW exam- arrangement to have developed in ante- ines the profitability of individual banks in bellum America. detail and finds that, from 1834 until 1858, RSW challenges the sanguine view the dividend rate for the Suffolk Bank was that the Suffolk System demonstrates how consistently higher than for other banks in the unregulated market will provide an Boston as well as for the smaller banks in efficient payments system. It provides the rest of Massachusetts. new evidence that the profitability of the The authors then investigate what might Suffolk Bank was greater than that of account for the relatively high dividends for other banks in Boston and Massachusetts the Suffolk Bank. In doing so, they provide and that Suffolk Bank had a dominant an extremely important and original contri- role in the interbank borrowing and bution to the literature. They document the lending market. The authors then raise dominant role of the Suffolk Bank in the the possibility that this evidence suggests interbank borrowing and lending market. that the market would provide a “natural” The Suffolk Bank was not only the largest monopoly in payment services. While I holder of interbank deposits, as might natu- will question whether the Suffolk experi- rally be expected of the note-clearing agent, ence can address the monopoly issue, I but also the largest interbank lender, as the believe that RSW has given us a new and authors have shown in an earlier work (Rol- important direction in historical research nick, Smith, and Weber 1997). The Suffolk on payments systems, namely understand- Bank thus appears to have been more than ing the link between clearing arrange- simply a note-clearing agent; it also FEDERAL RESERVE BANK OF ST. LOUIS 117 MAY/JUNE 1998 appears to have been a major source of liq- payments and liquidity services, the evi- uidity in New England. The increase in dence does not necessarily imply that Suffolk’s profits coincided with the expan- Suffolk enjoyed a “natural” monopoly or sion of its interbank lending role. that there is a tendency for the market to This evidence, RSW argues, suggests that produce such a monopoly. A monopoly is there are economies of scope in the provision “natural” if, for a given market size, eco- of clearing and liquidity services. Suffolk’s nomies of scale (and possibly scope) are detailed information about the health and sufficiently strong that production costs activities of member banks, gleaned from are minimized when there is a single pro- operating the note-clearing system, may have ducer. That producer then can drive out reduced its costs of monitoring loans to other all competitors in the market and obtain a banks. The information advantage Suffolk monopoly. As RSW acknowledges, natural gained from note clearing led to its dominant monopolies do not necessarily result in role in the interbank funds market. Recently, socially inefficient use of resources, but a number of authors have argued that this they raise that possibility (see Edlin, Epel- complementarity is theoretically important baum, and Heller 1996). (e.g., Gilbert 1993, and Rajan forthcoming), The Suffolk System, however, did not but RSW provides the first empirical documen- operate in a completely unregulated envi- tation of such a linkage. Scope economies ronment, and regulation may have increased can be used as an efficiency rationale for the costs to potential competitors and the having the lender of last resort operate the heights of entry barriers. The difficult task payments system. is to untangle which regulations, if any, are It would be extremely valuable to know relevant to the development of the Suffolk whether Suffolk was effectively acting as a System and what impact they had on its lender of last resort. During the Suffolk Sys- operation. Although I will not attempt such tem era, banks in New England were more a full-scale evaluation here, I will mention stable than in other parts of the country some potentially important considerations. (Calomiris and Kahn 1996): Bank failure First, the Suffolk System received some rates and loss rates to depositors were lower special legislative support. As RSW notes, in New England, in both normal times and Vermont gave tax breaks to banks that during the bank panics of the late 1830s and joined the Suffolk System. In addition, Mas- 1857. As the authors documented in Rol- sachusetts did not permit banks to pay out nick, Smith, and Weber (1997), interbank to their customers’ notes of other banks, lending by the Suffolk Bank rose during the thereby providing an incentive for banks crises. Were the interbank activities of Suf- to use the Suffolk System for note clearing. folk a key contributor to the stability of bank- Such government encouragement may have ing in New England? To whom did Suffolk helped to increase the profitability of the lend during the crises, and on what terms? Suffolk Bank and deter new entrants. 1 RSW argues that Suffolk’s What risk exposure was the Suffolk Bank Second, despite the frequent use of apparently high return was not willing to incur? Could higher average the term “free banking” to describe mid- compensation for risk because returns be related to the insurance role that nineteenth century banking in the United dividend rates did not drop Suffolk may have been playing?1 A fascinat- States, entry into the banking industry was below those of other Boston ing possibility to explore in future research far from free. Bank charters required an act banks in any year throughout is whether and how well the markets pro- of the state legislature. By 1850, only Rhode the period. We do not have vided stability through a clearinghouse Island had passed a “free banking” statute. direct data on the annual prof- that was acting as a lender of last resort. This statute eased, but did not make “free,” its, losses, and cash flows. The relatively steady and high divi- entry into banking in that state. Only after Massachusetts passed its free banking sta- dend rate, however, might MONOPOLY: NATURAL OR mask underlying volatility, since tute in 1851 was a coalition of banks able to dividends can be paid out of a UNNATURAL? obtain a charter for what became the Bank surplus accumulated precisely to While RSW’s inquiry has shed new for Mutual Redemption (BMR), the bank smooth returns to shareholders. light on the relationship between that triumphed over Suffolk in 1858. FEDERAL RESERVE BANK OF ST. LOUIS 118 MAY/JUNE 1998 RSW argues that the key to the BMR’s fied banks may have had less demand for success is that, unlike other challengers to an interbank lending market. Rather than Suffolk, it was owned by its member banks, rely on other banks for liquidity, well- and this cooperative structure helped to branched banks might have been able to reduce the obstacles to coordinating a com- substitute an internal interbranch funds peting network of member banks. Twenty market for the interbank market. years earlier, however, a group of country banks had tried to obtain a charter from the Massachusetts state legislature for a banker’s FUTURE RESEARCH bank that would provide a competitor to RSW concludes by proposing a compar- the Suffolk System (Lake 1947). The pro- ative study of payments systems that devel- ponents of the Suffolk Bank killed the bill, oped in different parts of the United States and no bank owned by other banks was during the nineteenth century. Given the permitted a charter until the BMR. Suffolk state-by-state variation in regulation, such an was long protected from mutual organiza- investigation may shed light on the role of tional forms with different cost structures regulation in shaping the Suffolk System as that might have undercut Suffolk’s mono- well as other payments systems.
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