Despite France's importance in the interwar world economy, the scale of the French banking crises of 1930–1 and their consequences have never been fully assessed quantitatively. The lack of banking regulation severely limited the availability of balance sheet data. Using a new dataset of individual balance sheets from more than 300 banks, this article shows that the crises were much more severe than previously thought, although they did not affect the main commercial banks. By reconstructing financial flows, this study shows that the fall in bank credit was mostly driven by a flight‐to‐safety by deposits, from banks to savings institutions and the central bank. The decrease in bank deposits due to bank runs was offset by an increase in deposits with savings institutions, with the central bank, and in cash hoarding, whereas the decrease in bank credit was not offset by an increase in loans from non‐bank financial institutions. In line with the gold standard mentality, cash deposited with savings institutions and the central bank was used to decrease marketable public debt and increase gold reserves, rather than pursuing countercyclical policies. Despite massive capital inflows and rising aggregate money supply, France suffered from a severe, persistent credit crunch.

中文翻译：

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逃避安全和信贷紧缩：大萧条时期法国银行业危机的新历史†

尽管法国在两次世界大战之间的世界经济中具有重要意义，但1930-1年法国银行业危机的规模及其后果从未得到过充分的定量评估。缺乏银行监管严重限制了资产负债表数据的可用性。本文使用来自300多家银行的个人资产负债表的新数据集，表明危机虽然没有影响主要的商业银行，但比以前认为的严重得多。通过重建资金流量，这项研究表明，银行信贷的下降主要是由银行向储蓄机构和中央银行的存款逃往安全的驱动。由银行挤兑导致的银行存款减少被储蓄机构，中央银行和现金ho积的存款增加所抵消，银行信贷的减少并未被非银行金融机构的贷款增加所抵消。按照金本位制，储蓄机构和中央银行存放的现金被用来减少可出售的公共债务和增加黄金储备，而不是推行反周期政策。尽管有大量的资本流入和不断增加的货币供应总量，法国仍遭受着严重的持续信贷紧缩。