This paper studies a newly compiled data set of annual balance sheets of more than 11,000 commercial banks across 17 advanced economies since 1870. The new data expose the central role of large banks for credit cycles and financial instability throughout modern financial history and the...

We examine historical banking crises through the lens of bank equity declines, which cover a broad sample of episodes of banking distress both with and without banking panics. To do this, we construct a new dataset on bank equity returns and narrative information on banking panics for 46...

We investigate asset returns around banking crises in 44 advanced and emerging economies from 1960 to 2018. In contrast to the view that buying assets during banking crises is a profitable long-run strategy, we find returns of equity and other asset classes generally underperform after banking...