We employ a unique hand-collected dataset and a novel methodology to examine systemic risk before and after the largest U.S. banking crisis of the 20th century. Our systemic risk measure captures both the credit risk of an individual bank as well as a bank’s position in the network. We...

We investigate the effect of executives and directors with prior banking crisis experience on bank outcomes around the global financial crisis (GFC). Executives and directors with previous experience leading banks through a bank crisis may have been uniquely able to understand the risks,...

This paper studies how structural transformation exacerbates financial crises. Using newly collected data, I document the persistent effect of credit supply shocks on local economies during the Great Depression. Cities with access to an unusually generous branching network were no different from...

This paper presents a new indicator on financial stress from 1889 to 2016 based on the reporting in five major US newspapers. This indicator provides detailed and high-frequency coverage of more than a century of financial history based on a previously untapped corpus of 35 million newspaper...

This paper attempts a cursory synthesis of common narratives used to explain the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the only financial institution that was not bailed out during the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. As such the paper explores justifications for Lehman’s demise such as Lehman was not too...

The Great Depression is infamous for banking panics, which were a symptomatic of a phenomenon that scholars have labeled a contagion of fear. Using geocoded, microdata on bank distress, we develop metrics that illuminate the incidence of these events and how banks that remained in operation...

After the Latin American Debt Crisis of 1982, the official response worldwide turned to minimum capital standards to promote stable banking systems. Despite their existence, however, such standards have still not prevented periodic disruptions in the banking sectors of various countries. After...

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...

Why do banks fail? We create a panel covering most commercial banks from 1865 through 2023 to study the history of failing banks in the United States. Failing banks are characterized by rising asset losses, deteriorating solvency, and an increasing reliance on expensive non-core funding....

This paper studies a dynamic version of the Holmstrom-Tirole model of intermediated finance. I show that competitive equilibria are not constrained efficient when the economy experiences a financial crisis. A pecuniary externality entails that banks' desire to accumulate capital over time...