IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/16460.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Arresting Banking Panics: Fed Liquidity Provision and the Forgotten Panic of 1929

Author

Listed:
  • Mark Carlson
  • Kris James Mitchener
  • Gary Richardson

Abstract

Scholars differ on whether Federal Reserve intervention mitigated banking panics during the Great Depression and in recent years. The last panic prior to the Depression sheds light on this debate. In April 1929, a fruit fly infestation in Florida forced the U.S. government to quarantine fruit shipments from the state and destroy infested groves. When Congress recessed in June without approving compensation for farmers, depositors in citrus growing regions began withdrawing deposits from banks, culminating in runs on institutions in the financial center of Tampa and surrounding cities. Using archival evidence, we describe how the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta halted the spread of the panic by rushing currency to member banks. Analysis based on a new micro-level database of commercial banks in Florida shows that bank failures would have been twice as high without the Fed's intervention. The policy response of the Fed ended the panic and suggests that similar interventions by the Fed may have been useful during the Great Depression, even in cases where banks faced questions about their solvency.

Suggested Citation

  • Mark Carlson & Kris James Mitchener & Gary Richardson, 2010. "Arresting Banking Panics: Fed Liquidity Provision and the Forgotten Panic of 1929," NBER Working Papers 16460, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:16460
    Note: DAE ME
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w16460.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Markus K. Brunnermeier & Lasse Heje Pedersen, 2009. "Market Liquidity and Funding Liquidity," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(6), pages 2201-2238, June.
    2. White, Eugene Nelson, 1984. "A Reinterpretation of the Banking Crisis of 1930," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 44(1), pages 119-138, March.
    3. Gary Richardson & William Troost, 2009. "Monetary Intervention Mitigated Banking Panics during the Great Depression: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from a Federal Reserve District Border, 1929-1933," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 117(6), pages 1031-1073, December.
    4. Calomiris, Charles W & Mason, Joseph R, 1997. "Contagion and Bank Failures during the Great Depression: The June 1932 Chicago Banking Panic," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(5), pages 863-883, December.
    5. Douglas W. Diamond & Raghuram G. Rajan, 2005. "Liquidity Shortages and Banking Crises," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(2), pages 615-647, April.
    6. Wood,John H., 2005. "A History of Central Banking in Great Britain and the United States," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521850131, October.
    7. Mark Carlson, 2010. "Alternatives for Distressed Banks during the Great Depression," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 42(2-3), pages 421-441, March.
    8. Carlson, Mark, 2005. "Causes of bank suspensions in the panic of 1893," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 56-80, January.
    9. Aleh Tsyvinski & Arijit Mukherji & Christian Hellwig, 2006. "Self-Fulfilling Currency Crises: The Role of Interest Rates," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(5), pages 1769-1787, December.
    10. Peter Temin, 1991. "Lessons from the Great Depression," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262700441, December.
    11. Charles W. Calomiris & Joseph R. Mason, 2003. "Fundamentals, Panics, and Bank Distress During the Depression," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(5), pages 1615-1647, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Eugene N. White, 2015. "Protecting Financial Stability in the Aftermath of World War I: The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta's Dissenting Policy," NBER Working Papers 21341, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Tetsuji Okazaki & Michiru Sawada, 2012. "Interbank networks in prewar Japan: structure and implications," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press, vol. 21(2), pages 463-506, April.
    3. Jonathan D. Rose, 2012. "The prolonged resolution of troubled real estate lenders during the 1930s," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2012-31, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    4. Jonathan D. Rose, 2014. "The Prolonged Resolution of Troubled Real Estate Lenders during the 1930s," NBER Chapters, in: Housing and Mortgage Markets in Historical Perspective, pages 245-284, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mark Carlson & Kris James Mitchener & Gary Richardson, 2011. "Arresting Banking Panics: Federal Reserve Liquidity Provision and the Forgotten Panic of 1929," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 119(5), pages 889-924.
    2. Jenter, Dirk & Aldunate, Felipe & Korteweg, Arthur & Koudijs, Peter, 2021. "Shareholder Liability and Bank Failure," CEPR Discussion Papers 16309, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. Rivero Leiva, David & Rodríguez Mendizábal, Hugo, 2019. "Self-fulfilling runs and endogenous liquidity creation," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 45(C).
    4. Michael D. Bordo & John Landon-Lane, 2010. "The Lessons from the Banking Panics in the United States in the 1930s for the Financial Crisis of 2007-2008," NBER Working Papers 16365, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Calomiris, Charles W. & Carlson, Mark, 2017. "Interbank networks in the National Banking Era: Their purpose and their role in the Panic of 1893," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(3), pages 434-453.
    6. Schnabel, Isabel, 2002. "The Great Banks` Depression - Deposit Withdrawals in the German Crisis of 1931," Sonderforschungsbereich 504 Publications 03-11, Sonderforschungsbereich 504, Universität Mannheim;Sonderforschungsbereich 504, University of Mannheim.
    7. Silva, Walmir & Kimura, Herbert & Sobreiro, Vinicius Amorim, 2017. "An analysis of the literature on systemic financial risk: A survey," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 28(C), pages 91-114.
    8. Michael D. Bordo & Hugh Rockoff, 2013. "Not Just the Great Contraction: Friedman and Schwartz's A Monetary History of the United States 1867 to 1960," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(3), pages 61-65, May.
    9. Goldstein, Itay & Razin, Assaf, 2015. "Three Branches of Theories of Financial Crises," Foundations and Trends(R) in Finance, now publishers, vol. 10(2), pages 113-180, 30.
    10. Calomiris, Charles W. & Flandreau, Marc & Laeven, Luc, 2016. "Political foundations of the lender of last resort: A global historical narrative," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 28(C), pages 48-65.
    11. Rajkamal Iyer & José-Luis Peydró, 2011. "Interbank Contagion at Work: Evidence from a Natural Experiment," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(4), pages 1337-1377.
    12. Alvarez, Sebastian, 2015. "Playing with Fire? Internationalization and Condition of Mexican Banks Prior to The 1982 Debt Crisis," Working Papers unige:55513, University of Geneva, Paul Bairoch Institute of Economic History.
    13. Nanda, Ramana & Nicholas, Tom, 2014. "Did bank distress stifle innovation during the Great Depression?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(2), pages 273-292.
    14. Calomiris, Charles W. & Carlson, Mark, 2016. "Corporate governance and risk management at unprotected banks: National banks in the 1890s," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 119(3), pages 512-532.
    15. Kris James Mitchener & Gary Richardson, 2020. "Contagion of Fear," NBER Working Papers 26859, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Charles Calomiris, 2009. "Banking Crises and the Rules of the Game," NBER Working Papers 15403, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Charles W. Calomiris, 2007. "Bank Failures in Theory and History: The Great Depression and Other "Contagious" Events," NBER Working Papers 13597, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Charles W. Calomiris & Matthew Jaremski & David C. Wheelock, 2019. "Interbank Connections, Contagion and Bank Distress in the Great Depression," Working Papers 2019-001, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    19. Bordo, M.D. & Meissner, C.M., 2016. "Fiscal and Financial Crises," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 355-412, Elsevier.
    20. Robert L. Hetzel, 2009. "Should increased regulation of bank risk-taking come from regulators or from the market?," Economic Quarterly, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, vol. 95(Spr), pages 161-200.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy
    • E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies
    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages
    • N22 - Economic History - - Financial Markets and Institutions - - - U.S.; Canada: 1913-

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:16460. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.