Quarterly Data on the Categories and Causes of Bank Distress During the Great Depression

Gary Richardson

NBER Working Paper No. 12715
Issued in December 2006
NBER Program(s):   DAE   ME

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.

(389 K)

Published: Richardson, Gary. “Quarterly Data on the Categories and Causes of Bank Distress during the Great Depression." Research in Economic History 25 (January 2008): 37-115.

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