The history of the German cooperative banks has enjoyed renewed attention in recent years. This applies specifically to the current cen-tral cooperative bank, DZ BANK, whose origin lies in the Prussian Central Cooperative Bank (‹Preußenkasse›) founded in 1895. What previous research has in...

In the summer of 1931, the Austro-German banking crisis spread to Romania and Bulgaria. In the Romanian case, the management of the crisis confronted three types of protagonists - politicians, bankers and central bankers - and positions about the relevant attitude to adopt, in particular to...

This paper revisits the Swedish banking crisis (1919-26) that materialized as post war deflation replaced wartime inflation (1914-18). Inspired by Fisher's 'debt deflation theory', we employ survival analysis to 'predict' which banks would fail, given certain ex-ante bank characteristics. Our...

The massification of retail finance in the 1980s relied on the successful deployment of automated teller machines (ATM) and on-line real-time (OLRT) computing during the 1960s and 1970s. We document how the deployment of ATM networks interweaved with the adoption of OLRT computing in Sweden and...

During the previous three decades, mutual financial firms have been experiencing a process of demutualization, and some of the non-for-profit banks have become publicly listed companies. Hence, the persistence of the Spanish Savings Banks constitutes an interesting case study. In line with...

This paper examines the 1931 German banking crisis using a bank-level data set. It specifically focuses on the link between banking structure and financial stability. The universality of banks, a key characteristic of the German banking system, is shown to increase the probability of bank...

This paper examines the link between banking structure and financial fragility across Europe during the 1920s and 1930s using a new database. Monthly and annual data are analyzed to show that countries with universal banking were more likely to experience crises. Furthermore, those countries...

Why do some banks fail in financial crises while others survive? This article answers this question by analysing the effect of the Dutch financial crisis of the 1920s on 142 banks, of which 33 failed. We find that choices of balance sheet composition and product market strategy made in the...

Much has already been written about the 1931 German banking crisis, hence this article will focus on two less frequently addressed aspects. With respect to the question of the direct cause of the crisis and of the run which occurred on 13 July, pertinent developments in the area of gold and...

We use the German Crisis of 1931, a key event of the Great Depression, to study how depositors behave during a bank run in the absence of deposit insurance. We find that deposits decline by around 20 percent during the run and that there is an equal outflow of retail and nonfinancial wholesale...