Argentina's economic crisis has strong similarities with previous crises stretching back to the nineteenth century. A common thread runs through all these crises: the interaction of a weak, undisciplined, or corruptible banking sector, and some other group of conspirators from the public or...

This paper studies the role of bank affiliations in mitigating frictions related to asymmetric information. The analysis focuses on Massachusetts, and tests whether firms with bank directors on their boards fared better following the Panic of 1873, which did not directly impact the state's...

This paper creates a new database that covers all banks in the United States in the census years between 1870 and 1900 to test the interaction between inequality and financial development when the banking system was starting over from scratch. A fixed-effects panel regression shows that the...

In this paper we argue that in 19th century U.S, households and firms that were located in cities with banks enjoyed a higher level of both consumption and production amenities than those who were located in cities without banks. We use data on banks location and city population growth in the...

Studies have shown a connection between finance and growth, but most do not consider how financial and real factors interact to put a virtuous cycle of economic development into motion. As the main transportation advance of the 19th century, railroads connected established commercial centers and...

Introduction / William J. Collins and Robert A. Margo -- Business organization and internal governance. Revisiting American exceptionalism: democracy and the regulation of corporate governance: the case of nineteenth-century Pennsylvania in comparative context / Naomi R. Lamoreaux -- Corporate...

Intro -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction - William J. Collins and Robert A. Margo -- I. Business Organization and Internal Governance -- 1. Revisiting American Exceptionalism: Democracy and the Regulation of Corporate Governance: The Case of Nineteenth-Century Pennsylvania in...

We examine how financial crises redistribute risk, employing novel empirical methods and micro data from the largest financial crisis of the 20th century - the Great Depression. Using balance-sheet and systemic risk measures at the bank level, we build an econometric model with incidental...

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...

We use payroll data on 1.2 million bank employee years in the Austrian, German, and Swiss banking sector to identify incentive pay in the critical banking segments of treasury/capital market management and investment banking for 66 banks. We document an economically significant correlation of...