Did Doubling Reserve Requirements Cause the 1937-38 Recession? New Evidence on the Impact of Reserve Requirements on Bank Reserve Demand and Lending

Abstract

In 1936-37, the Federal Reserve doubled member banks’ reserve requirements. Friedman and Schwartz (1963) famously argued that the doubling increased reserve demand and forced the money supply to contract, which they argued caused the recession of 1937-38. Using a new database on individual banks, we show that higher reserve requirements did not generally increase banks’ reserve demand or contract lending because reserve requirements were not binding for most banks. Aggregate effects on credit supply from reserve requirement increases were therefore economically small and statistically zero. The authors thank Jason Dunn, Jamie Kurash, Hong Lee, David Lopez, Peter McCrory, and Paul Morris for research assistance, and Matt Jaremski and Allan Meltzer for helpful discussions. Views expressed in this paper do not necessarily reflect official positions of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis or the Federal Reserve System.