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The Effects of Reconstruction Finance Corporation Assistance on Michigan's Banks' Survival in the 1930s

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Listed:
  • Charles W. Calomiris
  • Joseph R. Mason
  • Marc Weidenmier
  • Katherine Bobroff

Abstract

This paper examines the effects of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation's (RFC) loan and preferred stock programs on bank failure rates in Michigan during the period 1932-1934, which includes the important Michigan banking crisis of early 1933 and its aftermath. Using a new database on Michigan banks, we employ probit and survival duration analysis to examine the effectiveness of the RFC's loan program (the policy tool employed before March 1933) and the RFC's preferred stock purchases (the policy tool employed after March 1933) on bank failure rates. Our estimates treat the receipt of RFC assistance as an endogenous variable. We are able to identify apparently valid and powerful instruments (predictors of RFC assistance that are not directly related to failure risk) for analyzing the effects of RFC assistance on bank survival. We find that the loan program had no statistically significant effect on the failure rates of banks during the crisis; point estimates are sometimes positive, sometimes negative, and never estimated precisely. This finding is consistent with the view that the effectiveness of debt assistance was undermined by some combination of increasing the indebtedness of financial institutions and subordinating bank depositors. We find that RFC's purchases of preferred stock - which did not increase indebtedness or subordinate depositors - increased the chances that a bank would survive the financial crisis. We also perform a parallel analysis of the effects of RFC preferred stock assistance on the loan supply of surviving banks. We find that RFC assistance not only contributed to loan supply by reducing failure risk; conditional on bank survival, RFC assistance is associated with significantly higher lending by recipient banks from 1931 to 1935.

Suggested Citation

  • Charles W. Calomiris & Joseph R. Mason & Marc Weidenmier & Katherine Bobroff, 2012. "The Effects of Reconstruction Finance Corporation Assistance on Michigan's Banks' Survival in the 1930s," NBER Working Papers 18427, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:18427
    Note: CF DAE ME
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. Money for Nothing? Banking Failure and Public Funds in Michigan in the early 1930s
      by sebastianfleitas in NEP-HIS blog on 2012-10-19 18:23:30

    Citations

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    Cited by:

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    2. Charles W. Calomiris & Matthew Jaremski, 2016. "Deposit Insurance: Theories and Facts," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 8(1), pages 97-120, October.
    3. 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.
    4. Butkiewicz, James, 2015. "Eugene Meyer And The German Influence On The Origin Of Us Federal Financial Rescues," Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Cambridge University Press, vol. 37(1), pages 57-77, March.
    5. Bernd Schwaab, 2013. "Discussion of Bank Funding and Financial Stability," RBA Annual Conference Volume (Discontinued), in: Alexandra Heath & Matthew Lilley & Mark Manning (ed.),Liquidity and Funding Markets, Reserve Bank of Australia.
    6. Sriya Anbil & Angela Vossmeyer, 2017. "Liquidity from Two Lending Facilities," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2017-117, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    7. van Wijnbergen, Sweder, 2015. "On Zombie Banks and Recessions after Systemic Banking Crises," CEPR Discussion Papers 10963, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    8. Hoag, Christopher, 2018. "Clearinghouse loan certificates as a lender of last resort," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 215-229.
    9. Charles W. Calomiris & Urooj Khan, 2015. "An Assessment of TARP Assistance to Financial Institutions," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 29(2), pages 53-80, Spring.
    10. Anbil, Sriya & Vossmeyer, Angela, 2021. "Liquidity from two lending facilities," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 48(C).
    11. Barry Eichengreen, 2016. "The Great Depression in a Modern Mirror," De Economist, Springer, vol. 164(1), pages 1-17, March.
    12. Lyndon Moore & Gertjan Verdickt, 2022. "Railroad Bailouts in the Great Depression," Papers 2205.13025, arXiv.org, revised May 2023.
    13. Anbil, Sriya, 2018. "Managing stigma during a financial crisis," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 130(1), pages 166-181.
    14. Breitenlechner, Max & Mathy, Gabriel P. & Scharler, Johann, 2021. "Decomposing the U.S. Great Depression: How important were loan supply shocks?," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    15. Gram, Dennis & Karapanagiotis, Pantelis & Krzyzanowski, Jan & Liebald, Marius & Walz, Uwe, 2021. "An extensible model for historical financial data with an application to German company and stock market data," SAFE Working Paper Series 300, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G01 - Financial Economics - - General - - - Financial Crises
    • G18 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Government Policy and Regulation
    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages
    • G28 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Government Policy and Regulation
    • N12 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations - - - U.S.; Canada: 1913-
    • N22 - Economic History - - Financial Markets and Institutions - - - U.S.; Canada: 1913-

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