IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mpg/wpaper/2005_05.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Role of Liquidity and Implicit Guarantees in the German Twin Crisis of 1931

Author

Listed:
  • Isabel Schnabel

    (Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Bonn, Germany)

Abstract

Using monthly balance-sheet data of all major German credit banks, we analyze deposit with-drawals and bank failures in the German banking and currency crisis of 1931. We find that de-posit withdrawals were driven by the run on the currency, but were also related to banks’ liquidity positions; that branch banks were no more stable than unit banks; and that large banks were privileged, being bailed out and receiving preferential access to the discount window. These findings underline the importance of liquidity and implicit guarantees in twin crises, while they question the benefits of branching in such crises.

Suggested Citation

  • Isabel Schnabel, 2005. "The Role of Liquidity and Implicit Guarantees in the German Twin Crisis of 1931," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2005_5, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    • Handle: RePEc:mpg:wpaper:2005_05
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.coll.mpg.de/pdf_dat/2005_05online.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. M. Berlemann & K. Hristov & Nikolay Nenovsky, 2002. "Lending of last resort, moral hazard and twin crises. Lessons from the Bulgarian financial crises 1996/1997," Post-Print halshs-00260052, HAL.
    2. Carmen M. Reinhart & Graciela L. Kaminsky, 1999. "The Twin Crises: The Causes of Banking and Balance-of-Payments Problems," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(3), pages 473-500, June.
    3. Schumacher, Liliana, 2000. "Bank runs and currency run in a system without a safety net: Argentina and the 'tequila' shock," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 257-277, August.
    4. Milton Friedman & Anna J. Schwartz, 1963. "A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number frie63-1, July.
    5. Corsetti, Giancarlo & Pesenti, Paolo & Roubini, Nouriel, 1999. "Paper tigers?: A model of the Asian crisis," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 43(7), pages 1211-1236, June.
    6. Harold James, 1984. "The Causes of the German Banking Crisis of 1931," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 37(1), pages 68-87, February.
    7. Wicker,Elmus, 1996. "The Banking Panics of the Great Depression," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521562614.
    8. Mark Carlson, 2004. "Are Branch Banks Better Survivors? Evidence from the Depression Era," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 42(1), pages 111-126, January.
    9. Demsetz, Rebecca S & Strahan, Philip E, 1997. "Diversification, Size, and Risk at Bank Holding Companies," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 29(3), pages 300-313, August.
    10. Kryzanowski, Lawrence & Roberts, Gordon S, 1993. "Canadian Banking Solvency, 1922-1940," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 25(3), pages 361-376, August.
    11. Balderston, Theo, 1994. "The banks and the gold standard in the German financial crisis of 1931," Financial History Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 1(1), pages 43-68, April.
    12. Manuel Arellano & Stephen Bond, 1991. "Some Tests of Specification for Panel Data: Monte Carlo Evidence and an Application to Employment Equations," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 58(2), pages 277-297.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Schnabel, Isabel & Körner, Tobias, 2012. "Abolishing Public Guarantees in the Absence of Market Discipline," VfS Annual Conference 2012 (Goettingen): New Approaches and Challenges for the Labor Market of the 21st Century 65401, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    2. Reint Gropp & Hendrik Hakenes & Isabel Schnabel, 2011. "Competition, Risk-shifting, and Public Bail-out Policies," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(6), pages 2084-2120.
    3. Bindseil, Ulrich & Winkler, Adalbert, 2012. "Dual liquidity crises under alternative monetary frameworks: a financial accounts perspective," Working Paper Series 1478, European Central Bank.
    4. Admati, Anat R. & DeMarzo, Peter M. & Hellwig, Martin F. & Pfleiderer, Paul, 2010. "Fallacies, Irrelevant Facts, and Myths in the Discussion of Capital Regulation: Why Bank Equity Is Not Expensive," Research Papers 2065, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    5. Alexander Schaefer & Isabel Schnabel & Beatrice Weder di Mauro, 2013. "Financial Sector Reform After the Crisis: Has Anything Happened?," Working Papers 1304, Gutenberg School of Management and Economics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, revised 24 May 2013.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Schnabel, Isabel, 2002. "The Great Banks` Depression - Deposit Withdrawals in the German Crisis of 1931," Sonderforschungsbereich 504 Publications 03-11, Sonderforschungsbereich 504, Universität Mannheim;Sonderforschungsbereich 504, University of Mannheim.
    2. Gorton, Gary & Winton, Andrew, 2003. "Financial intermediation," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 8, pages 431-552, Elsevier.
    3. Fratianni, Michele & Giri, Federico, 2017. "The tale of two great crises," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 5-31.
    4. Victor Aguirregabiria & Robert Clark & Hui Wang, 2016. "Diversification of geographic risk in retail bank networks: evidence from bank expansion after the Riegle-Neal Act," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 47(3), pages 529-572, August.
    5. Hugh Rockoff, 2003. "Deflation, Silent Runs, and Bank Holidays, in the Great Contraction," NBER Working Papers 9522, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Goldstein, Itay & Razin, Assaf, 2015. "Three Branches of Theories of Financial Crises," Foundations and Trends(R) in Finance, now publishers, vol. 10(2), pages 113-180, 30.
    7. Mark Carlson, 2010. "Alternatives for Distressed Banks during the Great Depression," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 42(2-3), pages 421-441, March.
    8. Sarah Sanya & Simon Wolfe, 2011. "Can Banks in Emerging Economies Benefit from Revenue Diversification?," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 40(1), pages 79-101, October.
    9. Ryota Nakatani, 2017. "The Effects of Productivity Shocks, Financial Shocks, and Monetary Policy on Exchange Rates: An Application of the Currency Crisis Model and Implications for Emerging Market Crises," Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 53(11), pages 2545-2561, November.
    10. Eduardo Levy‐Yeyati & María Soledad Martínez Pería & Sergio L. Schmukler, 2010. "Depositor Behavior under Macroeconomic Risk: Evidence from Bank Runs in Emerging Economies," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 42(4), pages 585-614, June.
    11. Kristian Blickle & Markus K. Brunnermeier & Stephan Luck, 2022. "Who Can Tell Which Banks Will Fail?," NBER Working Papers 29753, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Ghosh, Saibal, 2017. "Does central bank governors term in office matter for macroprudential policies? Evidence from MENA banks," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 34-51.
    13. Pham, Thi Hoang Anh & Doan, Ngoc Thang, 2023. "Global bank complexity and financial fragility around the world," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 47(1).
    14. Eijffinger, Sylvester C.W. & Karataş, Bilge, 2012. "Currency crises and monetary policy: A study on advanced and emerging economies," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 31(5), pages 948-974.
    15. Peter Ignatiev, 2004. "Theoretical Models of Financial Crises," Economic Thought journal, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences - Economic Research Institute, issue 2, pages 110-130.
    16. de Bandt, Olivier & Hartmann, Philipp, 2000. "Systemic Risk: A Survey," CEPR Discussion Papers 2634, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    17. Kauko, Karlo, 2014. "How to foresee banking crises? A survey of the empirical literature," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 289-308.
    18. Xingwang Qian & Andreas Steiner, 2014. "International Reserves and the Composition of Foreign Equity Investment," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(2), pages 379-409, May.
    19. Rüffer, Rasmus, 1999. "Implicit government guarantees and bank herding behavior," Discussion Paper Series 1: Economic Studies 1999,06, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    20. Ryota Nakatani, 2019. "Output Costs of Currency Crisis and Banking Crisis: Shocks, Policies and Cycles," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 61(1), pages 83-102, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Twin crises; liquidity; implicit guarantees; “too big to fail”;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages
    • E5 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit
    • N24 - Economic History - - Financial Markets and Institutions - - - Europe: 1913-
    • C34 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Truncated and Censored Models; Switching Regression Models

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mpg:wpaper:2005_05. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Marc Martin (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/mppggde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.