Flight-to-safety and the Credit Crunch: A new history of the banking crisis in France during the Great Depression

Patrice Baubeau, Eric Monnet, Angelo Riva and Stefano Ungaro

Working papers from Banque de France

Abstract: Despite France's importance in the interwar world economy, the scale and consequences of the French banking crises of 1930 1931 were never assessed quantitatively due to lack of data in the absence of banking regulation. Using a new dataset of individual balance sheets from more than 400 banks, we show that the crisis was more severe and occurred earlier than previously thought, and it was very asymmetric, without affecting main commercial banks. The primary transmission channel was a flight-to-safety of deposits from banks to savings institutions and the central bank, leading to a major, persistent disruption in business lending. In line with the gold standard mentality, cash deposited with savings institutions and the central bank was used to decrease marketable public debt and increase gold reserves, rather than pursue countercyclical policies. Despite massive capital inflows, France suffered from a severe, persistent credit crunch.

Keywords: Great Depression; flight-to-safety; France; banking panics; Savings Banks; gold standard. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E44 E51 E58 G01 G21 G23 G33 N14 N24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 59 pages
Date: 2018
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-mac and nep-pay
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Flight‐to‐safety and the credit crunch: a new history of the banking crises in France during the Great Depression (2021)
Working Paper: Flight‐to‐safety and the credit crunch: a new history of the banking crises in France during the Great Depression (2021)
Working Paper: Flight‐to‐safety and the credit crunch: a new history of the banking crises in France during the Great Depression (2021)
Working Paper: Flight-to-safety and the Credit Crunch: A new history of the banking crisis in France during the Great Depression (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bfr:banfra:698

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