Bank Supervision, Regulation, and Instability During the Great Depression

Kris James Mitchener

No 10475, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Even after controlling for local economic conditions, differences in state bank supervision and regulation contribute toward explaining the large variation in state bank suspension rates across U.S. counties during the Great Depression. More stringent capital requirements lowered suspension rates while laws prohibiting branch banking and imposing high reserve requirements had the opposite effect. States that endowed bank supervisors with the authority to liquidate banks minimized contagion and credit-channel dislocations and experienced lower suspension rates. Those that gave their supervisors sole authority to issue bank charters and that granted their supervisors long terms strengthened the incentives for bank lobbyists to influence supervisory decisions and consequently experienced higher rates of suspension.

JEL-codes: E44 N2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-reg
Note: DAE ME
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Published as Mitchener, Kris James. "Bank Supervision, Regulation, And Instability During The Great Depression," Journal of Economic History, 2005, v65(1,Mar), 152-185.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w10475.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:10475

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w10475

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().