Working Paper: NBER ID: w12715
Authors: Gary Richardson
Abstract: During the contraction from 1929 through 1933, the Federal Reserve System tracked changes in the status of all banks operating in the United States and determined the cause of each bank suspension. This essay introduces quarterly series derived from that hitherto dormant data and presents aggregate series constructed from it. The new data series will supplement, and in some cases, supplant the data currently used to study banking panics of the Great Depression, which was published by the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in 1937.
Keywords: bank distress; Great Depression; Federal Reserve; bank suspensions
JEL Codes: E0; E4; N1; N2
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| bank suspensions (G21) | economic conditions (E66) |
| illiquidity + asset depreciation + failure of large debtors (G33) | bank suspensions (G21) |
| Federal Reserve's inaction (E52) | bank suspensions (G21) |
| heavy withdrawals + slow or worthless paper (E41) | bank suspensions (G21) |
| bank distress (G21) | loan defaults (G33) |
| bank distress (G21) | asset values (G32) |