Bank asset liquidation and the propagation of the US Great Depression

We hypothesize that financial disintermediation during and after the Great Depression arose from the slow liquidation of failed-bank deposits. Empirical results from incorporating the stock of failed national bank deposits for the period 1921-40 in vector autoregression (VAR) models suggest that the stock of deposits in closed banks undergoing liquidation is as important as money stock in terms of explaining output changes over forecast horizons from one to three years. Hence, we infer that the dynamic effects of banking sector shocks were cumulative and pervasive during and after the Depression.