Document Type
Article
Publication Date
8-11-2025
Abstract
Roosevelt’s Bank Holiday in March 1933 aimed to halt bank runs and implement licensing for banks. Using a new hand-collected daily database, we examine how bank stocks and bond markets responded to this sweeping regulation. We find that New York City banks saw significant negative abnormal returns, while Chicago banks experienced positive returns, highlighting regional differences in perceptions of the policy. Corporate bond yields fell by 1.4 percentage points, lowering interest rates. Our findings show how markets reacted differently across regions and asset classes to this critical intervention.
Recommended Citation
Weidenmier, M., Vossmeyer, A., Stella, N., Aldanmaz, O., 2025. Bank stocks and Roosevelt’s bank holiday. Econ. Lett. 255, 112539. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econlet.2025.112539
Peer Reviewed
1
Copyright
The authors
Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
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Comments
This article was originally published in Economics Letters, volume 255, in 2025. https://doi.org/