Credit supply shocks and the Great Depression in Germany

Abstract

Abstract At the peak of the Great Depression in mid-1931, Germany experienced a severe banking crisis. We study to what extent credit constraints contributed to the downturn by fitting a structural vector autoregressive model with data from January 1925 to September 1935. Adverse credit supply shocks contributed strongly to the downturn especially at the time of the 1931 banking crisis. Before that, credit supply shocks had also contributed to the expansion phase preceding the depression. We also find that aggregate demand and U.S. business cycle shocks were the primary drivers of the German Great Depression.