AnIllusoryFeelingofStability: Bank failures in france in the 1920s

This project contains the replication materials for Demilly (forthcoming), "An Illusory Feeling of Stability: Bank Failures in France in the 1920s," European Review of Economic History.
The article investigates the determinants of bank failures in France during the interwar period, focusing on the 1918–1928 decade. Using previously unexploited archival sources — the Albums of Crédit Lyonnais, which record the balance sheets of 277 French joint-stock banks, together with Banque de France supervisory reports and commercial-court failure files — the paper documents a counterintuitive result: failed banks held higher capital ratios than banks that survived. Logit and Cox proportional-hazards estimates show that capital did not protect banks against failure, while liquidity (cash holdings and central-bank reserves) did. Qualitative evidence on the failure cases suggests that high capital created an illusory feeling of stability, encouraging banks to engage in illiquid and speculative activities that they could not unwind when withdrawal pressures materialized.
The replication package includes: (i) the bank-level balance-sheet panel covering 1901–1941 in Stata format; (ii) annotated Stata .do files that reproduce every table and figure in the article and its appendices.