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

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successfully restored much of the public's faith in the banking system - it is estimated that over half of the cash withdrawn during the Great Depression was then returned to the banks by ********.

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

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.

Graph and download economic data for Real-time Sahm Rule Recession Indicator (SAHMREALTIME) from Dec 1959 to Sep 2025 about recession indicators, academic data, 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.

This paper shows how policy announcements can be used to manage expectations and have a role as a policy tool. Using regional variation in radio exposure, I evaluate the impact of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1935 Fireside Chat, in which he showcased the introduction of important social policies, establishing a new cycle of the New Deal. I document that cities with higher exposure to the announcement exhibited a significant increase in spending on durable goods. I provide evidence that this result is not driven by wealth or other potentially confounding variables. The estimated effect is consistent with changes in expectations toward the policies announced. This paper shows the power of communication as a policy tool in affecting economic activity. This version has been accepted for publication in The Review of Economics and Statistics .

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

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.

This dataset includes various economic indicators such as stock market performance, inflation rates, GDP, interest rates, employment data, and housing index, all of which are crucial for understanding the state of the economy. By analysing this dataset, one can gain insights into the causes and effects of past recessions in the US, which can inform investment decisions and policy-making.

There are 20 columns and 343 rows spanning 1990-04 to 2022-10

The columns are:

1. Price: Price column refers to the S&P 500 lot price over the years. The S&P 500 is a stock market index that measures the performance of 500 large companies listed on stock exchanges in the United States. This variable represents the value of the S&P 500 index from 1980 to present. Industrial Production: This variable measures the output of industrial establishments in the manufacturing, mining, and utilities sectors. It reflects the overall health of the manufacturing industry, which is a key component of the US economy.

2. INDPRO: Industrial production measures the output of the manufacturing, mining, and utility sectors of the economy. It provides insights into the overall health of the economy, as a decline in industrial production can indicate a slowdown in economic activity. This data can be used by policymakers and investors to assess the state of the economy and make informed decisions.

3. CPI: CPI stands for Consumer Price Index, which measures the change in the prices of a basket of goods and services that consumers purchase. CPI inflation represents the rate at which the prices of goods and services in the economy are increasing.

4. Treasure Bill rate (3 month to 30 Years): Treasury bills (T-bills) are short-term debt securities issued by the US government. This variable represents the interest rates on T-bills with maturities ranging from 3 months to 30 years. It reflects the cost of borrowing money for the government and provides an indication of the overall level of interest rates in the economy.

5. GDP: GDP stands for Gross Domestic Product, which is the value of all goods and services produced in a country. This dataset is taking into account only the Nominal GDP values. Nominal GDP represents the total value of goods and services produced in the US economy without accounting for inflation.

6. Rate: The Federal Funds Rate is the interest rate at which depository institutions lend reserve balances to other depository institutions overnight. It is set by the Federal Reserve and is used as a tool to regulate the money supply in the economy.

7. BBK_Index: The BBKI are maintained and produced by the Indiana Business Research Center at the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. The BBK Coincident and Leading Indexes and Monthly GDP Growth for the U.S. are constructed from a collapsed dynamic factor analysis of a panel of 490 monthly measures of real economic activity and quarterly real GDP growth. The BBK Leading Index is the leading subcomponent of the cycle measured in standard deviation units from trend real GDP growth.

8. Housing Index: This variable represents the value of the housing market in the US. It is calculated based on the prices of homes sold in the market and provides an indication of the overall health of the housing market.

9. Recession binary column: This variable is a binary indicator that takes a value of 1 when the US economy is in a recession and 0 otherwise. It is based on the official business cycle dates provided by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

We evaluate the Friedman-Schwartz hypothesis that a more accommodative monetary policy could have greatly reduced the severity of the Great Depression. To do this, we first estimate a dynamic, general equilibrium model using data from the 1920s and 1930s. Although the model includes eight shocks, the story it tells about the Great Depression turns out to be a simple and familiar one. The contraction phase was primarily a consequence of a shock that induced a shift away from privately intermediated liabilities, such as demand deposits and liabilities that resemble equity, and towards currency. The slowness of the recovery from the Depression was due to a shock that increased the market power of workers. We identify a monetary base rule which responds only to the money demand shocks in the model. We solve the model with this counterfactual monetary policy rule. We then simulate the dynamic response of this model to all the estimated shocks. Based on the model analysis, we conclude that if the counterfactual policy rule had been in place in the 1930s, the Great Depression would have been relatively mild.

The Federal Reserve System failed to prevent the collapse of intermediation during the Great Depression (1929-1933) and took action as if it was unaware of policies that should have been taken in the event of widespread bank runs. The National Banking Era panics and techniques to alleviate them should have been useful references for how to alleviate a financial crisis. We suggest that the overwhelming effort to finance World War I combined with a perspective held by contemporary Federal Reserve officials that the central bank legislation was sufficient to overcome financial crises are key reasons why the historical experiences were overlooked.

Graph and download economic data for NBER based Recession Indicators for the United States from the Period following the Peak through the Trough (USRECD) from 1854-12-01 to 2025-11-30 about peak, trough, recession indicators, 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.

Content

More details about each file are in the individual file descriptions.

Context

This is a dataset from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis hosted by the Federal Reserve Economic Database (FRED). FRED has a data platform found here and they update their information according to the frequency that the data updates. Explore the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis using Kaggle and all of the data sources available through the St. Louis Fed organization page!

• Update Frequency: This dataset is updated daily.

Acknowledgements

This dataset is maintained using FRED's API and Kaggle's API.

Cover photo by Eddy Billard on Unsplash
Unsplash Images are distributed under a unique Unsplash License.

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

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.

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

Statistical models that estimate 12-month-ahead recession probabilities using the term spread have been around for many years. However, the reliability of the term spread as a predictor may have been affected by short-term interest rates being at zero. At the zero lower bound, long-term yields cannot go too far into negative territory due to the portfolio constraints of institutional investors. Therefore, the yield curve may not invert when it should or as much as it should despite the anticipated path of the economy. I enhance the simple model with two variables that should have predictive power for recessions.