Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Marco Molteni
Author-Email: marco.molteni@history.ox.ac.uk
Author-Workplace-Name: History Faculty, Pembroke College, University of Oxford, UK
Title: The Distress of Italian Commercial Banks in 1926-1936: A New Dataset from Supervision Archives
Abstract: This paper documents a new dataset on the distress of Italian joint-stock banks in 1926-1936. It employs classified information from Italian banking supervision archives to identify outright and hidden bank failures. Providing the first all-embracing account of the crisis of small and medium banks in Italy during the Great Depression, it shows that once hidden distress is considered, their crisis was more severe than previously thought. Measured by total assets of banks involved, the distress of joint-stock banks would be considered a ‘systemic crisis’ by today standards. While previous research has mainly focused on the distress of large universal banks, this research opens new questions on our interpretation of the impact of bank distress in interwar Italy.
Classification-JEL: G01, G021, N24
Keywords: Banking Crises, Interwar Period, Italy, Commercial Banks, Great Depression.
Journal: Annals of the Fondazione Luigi Einaudi. An Interdisciplinary Journal of Economics, History and Political Science
Pages: 37-64
Volume: 57
Issue: 1
Year: 2023
Month: June
DOI: 10.26331/1201
File-URL: https://www.annalsfondazioneluigieinaudi.it/images/LVII/2023-1-003-Molteni.pdf
File-Format: Application/pdf
Handle: RePEc:fle:journl:v:57:y:2023:i:1:p:37-64