In the 1920s and 1930s, many public utilities in the United States were controlled by holding companies organized in pyramid form. This structure can add value to subsidiaries but can also facilitate extraction of wealth from the subsidiaries' public shareholders. I examine the effects of the...

Both the Great Depression and the Great Recession followed systemic banking crises and preceded unusually weak and slow recoveries. The prior literature has identified monetary, household demand, and credit effects as contributors to the severe and prolonged downturns. This paper studies a...