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This article creates a new database that covers all U.S. banks in the census years between 1870 and 1900 to test the interaction between inequality and financial development when the banking system was starting over from scratch. A fixed-effects panel regression shows that the number of banks per thousand people in the South has a strong positive relationship with the size of farm operations. This suggests that large southern farm operators welcomed new banks after the Civil War. When the analysis is extended into the 1900s, the relationship becomes more negative, as bankers may have tried to block entrants. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article reassesses the causes of Chicago state bank failures during the Great Depression by tracking the evolution of their balance sheets in the 1920s. I find that all banks suffered tremendous deposit withdrawals; however banks that failed earlier in the 1930s had invested more in mortgages in the 1920s. The main problem with mortgages was their lack of liquidity, not their quality. Banks heavily engaged in mortgages did not have enough liquid assets to face the withdrawals, and failed. This article thus reasserts the importance of pre-crisis liquidity risk management in preventing bank failures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article assesses how the government of Porfirio Díaz (1876-1910) negotiated sovereign loans. Mexico was a serial defaulter that established a good reputation and issued bonds abroad at progressively better conditions. Based on new archival material, the article demonstrates that borrowing terms improved not only because of sounder fundamentals, but also due to the efforts of high officials to negotiate with debt underwriters. The Mexicans never accepted a patron bank and used the offers from American banks to bargain with European competitors. They acted according to the government's reputation, the underwriters' status, and the ideology ofthe Porfirian state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]