Loans for the "Little Fellow : " Credit, Crisis, and Recovery in the Great Depression

This paper identifies how bank branching benefited local economies during the Great Depression. Using archival data and narrative evidence, I show how Bank of America's branch network in 1930s California created an internal capital market to diversify away local liquidity shortfalls, allowing it to maintain 49 percent higher credit growth from 1929 to 1933 than competing banking offices. The bank's presence caused smaller city property value contractions and stronger recoveries through 1940. Linked individual data show the bank's proximity hastened the transition away from agricultural employment and towards human capital-intensive sectors in the 1930s, generating industrialization and higher wages