Congressional intent concerning the independence of the Federal Reserve matters because it protects the public from the politicization of monetary policy. Attempts to subordinate monetary policy to the President could easily end up in front of the Supreme Court. The outcome of such a case would...

During the Progressive Era (1900-29), economic growth was rapid but volatile. Boom and busts witnessed the formation and failure of tens of thousands of firms and thousands of banks. This essay uses new data and methods to identify causal links between failures of banks and bankruptcies of...

A nationwide banking panic forced President Franklin Roosevelt to declare a nationwide banking holiday immediately after his inauguration in March 1933. The government reopened sound banks sequentially, with some resuming operations sooner and others later. Within three weeks, 11,000 of the...

Bank distress was a defining feature of the Great Depression in the United States. Most banks, however, weathered the storm and remained in operation throughout the contraction. We show that surviving banks cut lending when depositors withdrew funds en masse during panics. This panic-induced...

Which firms relied on commercial banks for credit and which firms did not at the onset of the Great Depression would seem to be an important question given the vast literature discussing banking distress in the United States during the 1930s. The question, however, has not been answered. This...

Dun's Review began publishing monthly data on bankruptcies by branch of business during the 1890s. Those series evolved through many iterations. This essay reconstructs the series from 1895 to 1935 and discusses how it can be used for economic analysis

The failure of the Freedman's Savings Bank (FSB), one of the only Black-serving banks in the early post-bellum South, was an economic catastrophe and one of the great episodes of racial exploitation in post-Emancipation history. It was also most Black Americans' first experience of banking. Can...