A nationwide banking panic forced President Franklin Roosevelt to declare a nationwide banking holiday immediately after his inauguration in March 1933. The government reopened sound banks sequentially, with some resuming operations sooner and others later. Within three weeks, 11,000 of the...

Which firms relied on commercial banks for credit and which firms did not at the onset of the Great Depression would seem to be an important question given the vast literature discussing banking distress in the United States during the 1930s. The question, however, has not been answered. This...