Data supporting the chapter "A Second Look at the U.S. Great Depression from a Neoclassical Perspective."

The financial crisis of 2007-09 is widely viewed as the worst financial disruption since the Great Depression of 1929-1933. However, the accompanying economic recession was mild compared with the Great Depression, though severe by postwar standards.

We study banking panics in the Great Depression using a newly digitized dataset on panic intensity, regional monetary aggregates and economic activity.

The estimated number of banks and thrifts in the United States fell from around ****** in 1920 to ****** in 1929, when the onset of the Great Depression would then see it fall further, below ****** in 1933. This marks a cumulative decline of over ****** banks and thrifts, which is equal to a drop of more than ** percent in 13 years. Tumultuous Twenties Despite the economic prosperity associated with the Roarin' 1920s in the U.S., it was a tumultuous decade in financial terms, with more separate recessions than any other decade. However, the ***** was also privy to frivolous lending policies among many banks, which saw the banking sector collapse in the wake of the Wall Street Crash in 1929. Many banks failed as the Great Depression and unemployment spread across the country, and customers or businesses could not afford to repay their loans. It was only after this financial crisis where the federal government began keeping more stringent and accurate records on its banking sector, therefore precise figures and the reasons behind these bank failures are not always clear. Franklin D. Roosevelt Just two days after assuming office in 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt drastically declared a bank holiday, and all banks in the country were closed from ******* until ********. This break allowed Congress to pass the Emergency Banking Act on *******, which saw the Federal Reserve provide deposit insurance for all reopened banks thereafter. Through his first fireside chat, Roosevelt then encouraged Americans to re-deposit their money in the banks again, which successfully restored much of the public's faith in the banking system - it is estimated that over half of the cash withdrawn during the Great Depression was then returned to the banks by ********.

Data supporting the chapter "Tariffs and the Great Depression Revisited."

Data supporting the chapter "The Great Depression in Canada and the United States: A Neoclassical Perspective."

Graph and download economic data for Unemployment Rate for United States (M0892AUSM156SNBR) from Apr 1929 to Jun 1942 about unemployment, rate, and USA.

This essay assesses whether network linkages within the banking system amplified the real effects of bank failures during the Great Contraction. In 1929, nearly all interbank deposits held by Federal Reserve member banks belonged to "shadowy" nonmember banks which were outside the regulatory reach of federal regulators. Regional banking panics in the early 1930s drained these interbank deposits from central reserve city banks. Money-center banks in Chicago and New York responded to volatile and declining interbank deposits by changing their asset composition. They reduced their lending to businesses and individuals, and increased their holdings of cash and government bonds.

Data supporting the chapter "The Great Depression in Italy: Trade Restrictions and Real Wage Rigidities."

Replication File for "The Founding of the Federal Reserve, the Great Depression, and the Evolution of the U.S. Interbank Network" by Matthew Jaremski and David Wheelock.

Abstract (en): The Federal Reserve implements its monetary policy by using open market operations in United States government securities to target the federal funds rate. A substantial decline in the stock of United States Treasury debt could interfere with the conduct of monetary policy, possibly forcing the Fed to rely more heavily on discount window lending or to conduct open market transactions in other types of securities. Either choice would cause the implementation of monetary policy to resemble the methods used by the Fed before World War II. This paper describes two things: (1) how the Fed implemented monetary policy before the war and (2) the conflicts that arose within the Fed over the allocation of private-sector credit when discount window loans and Fed purchases of private securities were a substantial component of Federal Reserve credit. Those conflicts help explain the Fed's failure to respond vigorously to the Great Depression. The experience suggests that a renewed reliance on the discount window or on open market operations in securities other than those issued by the United States Treasury could hamper the conduct of monetary policy if it leads to increased pressure on the Fed to affect the allocation of credit. The file submitted is 0205dwd.txt. These data are part of ICPSR's Publication-Related Archive and are distributed exactly as they arrived from the data depositor. ICPSR has not checked or processed this material. Users should consult the investigator if further information is desired.

Graph and download economic data for Dates of U.S. recessions as inferred by GDP-based recession indicator (JHDUSRGDPBR) from Q4 1967 to Q1 2025 about recession indicators, GDP, and USA.

The Volcker Shock was a period of historically high interest rates precipitated by Federal Reserve Chairperson Paul Volcker's decision to raise the central bank's key interest rate, the Fed funds effective rate, during the first three years of his term. Volcker was appointed chairperson of the Fed in August 1979 by President Jimmy Carter, as replacement for William Miller, who Carter had made his treasury secretary. Volcker was one of the most hawkish (supportive of tighter monetary policy to stem inflation) members of the Federal Reserve's committee, and quickly set about changing the course of monetary policy in the U.S. in order to quell inflation. The Volcker Shock is remembered for bringing an end to over a decade of high inflation in the United States, prompting a deep recession and high unemployment, and for spurring on debt defaults among developing countries in Latin America who had borrowed in U.S. dollars.

Monetary tightening and the recessions of the early '80s

Beginning in October 1979, Volcker's Fed tightened monetary policy by raising interest rates. This decision had the effect of depressing demand and slowing down the U.S. economy, as credit became more expensive for households and businesses. The Fed funds rate, the key overnight rate at which banks lend their excess reserves to each other, rose as high as 17.6 percent in early 1980. The rate was allowed to fall back below 10 percent following this first peak, however, due to worries that inflation was not falling fast enough, a second cycle of monetary tightening was embarked upon starting in August of 1980. The rate would reach its all-time peak in June of 1981, at 19.1 percent. The second recession sparked by these hikes was far deeper than the 1980 recession, with unemployment peaking at 10.8 percent in December 1980, the highest level since The Great Depression. This recession would drive inflation to a low point during Volcker's terms of 2.5 percent in August 1983.

The legacy of the Volcker Shock

By the end of Volcker's terms as Fed Chair, inflation was at a manageable rate of around four percent, while unemployment had fallen under six percent, as the economy grew and business confidence returned. While supporters of Volcker's actions point to these numbers as proof of the efficacy of his actions, critics have claimed that there were less harmful ways that inflation could have been brought under control. The recessions of the early 1980s are cited as accelerating deindustrialization in the U.S., as manufacturing jobs lost in 'rust belt' states such as Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania never returned during the years of recovery. The Volcker Shock was also a driving factor behind the Latin American debt crises of the 1980s, as governments in the region defaulted on debts which they had incurred in U.S. dollars. Debates about the validity of using interest rate hikes to get inflation under control have recently re-emerged due to the inflationary pressures facing the U.S. following the Coronavirus pandemic and the Federal Reserve's subsequent decision to embark on a course of monetary tightening.

Data supporting the chapter "The Role of Real Wages, Productivity, and Fiscal Policy in Germany’s Great Depression, 1928-37."

This paper explores simultaneous developments in the banking sector and the real economy during the Great Depression and whether these are related to shifts in beliefs about economic prospects. It identifies a notable coincidence of bank closures and declines in consumer durable consumption (new automobile purchases) in Ohio in the early 1930s. To examine whether shifts in beliefs and the economic concerns of households and businesses may have mattered, I test whether keywords from local newspapers related to economic prospects or sentiments are associated with subsequent bank closures and declines in automobile purchases. The results support the idea that beliefs mattered, even after accounting for economic fundamentals. The analysis also highlights the importance of local economic conditions in determining behavior.

Data supporting the chapter "The French Depression in the 1930s."

Data supporting the chapter "Modeling the Great Depression: Finland in the 1990s."

Data supporting the chapter "Prosperity and Depression." The file Ely-Sources.xls contains the original data and constructed series used to generate the Tables 1 to 6 and the Figures 1 to 3. Each of the nine objects has its own worksheet in the file. For example the worksheet that contains series used to generate figure 1 in the paper, is entitled Fig 1. In each worksheet, original series are labeled On and constructed series are labeled Cn. Constructed series Cn are obtained from the original and/or other constructed series in the respective worksheet.

During the period beginning roughly in the mid-1980s until the Global Financial Crisis (2007-2008), the U.S. economy experienced a time of relative economic calm, with low inflation and consistent GDP growth. Compared with the turbulent economic era which had preceded it in the 1970s and the early 1980s, the lack of extreme fluctuations in the business cycle led some commentators to suggest that macroeconomic issues such as high inflation, long-term unemployment and financial crises were a thing of the past. Indeed, the President of the American Economic Association, Professor Robert Lucas, famously proclaimed in 2003 that "central problem of depression prevention has been solved, for all practical purposes". Ben Bernanke, the future chairman of the Federal Reserve during the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and 2022 Nobel Prize in Economics recipient, coined the term 'the Great Moderation' to describe this era of newfound economic confidence. The era came to an abrupt end with the outbreak of the GFC in the Summer of 2007, as the U.S. financial system began to crash due to a downturn in the real estate market.

Causes of the Great Moderation, and its downfall

A number of factors have been cited as contributing to the Great Moderation including central bank monetary policies, the shift from manufacturing to services in the economy, improvements in information technology and management practices, as well as reduced energy prices. The period coincided with the term of Fed chairman Alan Greenspan (1987-2006), famous for the 'Greenspan put', a policy which meant that the Fed would proactively address downturns in the stock market using its monetary policy tools. These economic factors came to prominence at the same time as the end of the Cold War (1947-1991), with the U.S. attaining a new level of hegemony in global politics, as its main geopolitical rival, the Soviet Union, no longer existed. During the Great Moderation, the U.S. experienced a recession twice, between July 1990 and March 1991, and again from March 2001 tom November 2001, however, these relatively short recessions did not knock the U.S. off its growth path. The build up of household and corporate debt over the early 2000s eventually led to the Global Financial Crisis, as the bursting of the U.S. housing bubble in 2007 reverberated across the financial system, with a subsequent credit freeze and mass defaults.

Data supports the chapter "The Brazilian Depression in the 1980s and 1990s."