Title:

Fundamentals, Panics, and Bank Distress During the Depression

Author(s):

Calomiris, Charles W.
Mason, Joseph R.

Date:

2003

Type:

Articles

Department:

Business

Volume:

93

Permanent URL:

http://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:10880

Book/Journal Title:

American Economic Review

Abstract:

We assemble bank-level and other data for Fed member banks to model determinants of bank failure. Fundamentals explain bank failure risk well. The first two Friedman-Schwartz crises are not associated with positive unexplained residual failure risk, or increased importance of bank illiquidity for forecasting failure. The third Friedman-Schwartz crisis is more ambiguous, but increased residual failure risk is small in the aggregate. The final crisis (early 1933) saw a large unexplained increase in bank failure risk. Local contagion and illiquidity may have played a role in pre-1933 bank failures, even though those effects were not large in their aggregate impact.

Subject(s):

Economic history
Banking

DOI:

10.1257/000282803322655473

Item views:

232

Metadata:

description

View | Download