regional banking panics. We find that fundamentals explain most of the incidence of bank failure, and argue that contagion' or … of the importance of contagion or liquidity crises. At the national level, we find that the first two banking crises … changes in the importance of liquidity measures for forecasting bank failures. The third banking crisis they identify is a …

from the 1890s, a period when there were no distortions from deposit insurance or government interventions to assist banks …