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The French banking sector during the interwar: What lessons can be drawn from the stock market?

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  • Raphaël Hekimian

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to provide new insights on the French banking crisis of the1930’s. This crisis is usually considered in the literature to have been relatively more limited in France than in other European countries. One feature of the French banking system at that time was the specialization of its activities: French banks were, for the most part, either deposit or business banks. The literature highlights the fact that business banks faced the greatest difficulties because they invested in foreignmarkets. The purpose of this article is to test this hypothesis with a new dataset of stock prices by estimating the risk on i) the aggregated banking sector; ii) on two subsamples, one including only deposit banks and the other one, only business banks and iii) on the individual series. We find that during the 1930’s, business banks were indeed more risky than deposit banks, relative to the overall market.

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  • Raphaël Hekimian, 2017. "The French banking sector during the interwar: What lessons can be drawn from the stock market?," EconomiX Working Papers 2017-3, University of Paris Nanterre, EconomiX.
    • Handle: RePEc:drm:wpaper:2017-3
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    Cited by:

    1. Patrice Baubeau & Eric Monnet & Angelo Riva & Stefano Ungaro, 2021. "Flight‐to‐safety and the credit crunch: a new history of the banking crises in France during the Great Depression," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 74(1), pages 223-250, February.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Banking crisis; Financial History; Great Depression;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages
    • G01 - Financial Economics - - General - - - Financial Crises
    • N20 - Economic History - - Financial Markets and Institutions - - - General, International, or Comparative

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