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Deposit Insurance, Uninsured Depositors, and Liquidity Risk During Panics

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  • Matthew S. Jaremski
  • Steven Sprick Schuster

Abstract

The lack of universal deposit insurance coverage can create liquidity risk during financial crises. This aspect of deposit insurance is hard to test in modern data because of the broad coverage of most systems. We, therefore, study the role that the U.S. Postal Savings System played in commercial bank closures during the Great Depression. The system offered households a federally insured deposit account at post offices throughout the nation, and its structure provides a near-ideal environment to identify this competitive liquidity risk during a crisis. We find that banks that operated nearby a post office that accepted deposits were more likely to close between 1929 and 1935. We further make use of a structural change in the availability of postal depositories in the early 1910 to estimate an IV regression that confirms the results. In either model, the effect is strongest for those banks with low reserves, suggesting that the mechanism was through depositor withdrawals rather than other factors.

Suggested Citation

  • Matthew S. Jaremski & Steven Sprick Schuster, 2024. "Deposit Insurance, Uninsured Depositors, and Liquidity Risk During Panics," NBER Working Papers 32284, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32284
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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages
    • H42 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Publicly Provided Private Goods
    • N22 - Economic History - - Financial Markets and Institutions - - - U.S.; Canada: 1913-

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