Relationship Lending and the Great Depression
提出一种基于贷款利率对银行融资成本反应差异的新指标来衡量关系型贷款，发现银行倒闭对经济活动的影响在关系型贷款更密集的地区更大，证明关系型贷款放大了大萧条时期银行困境的真实经济效应。
Abstract The collapse of long-term lending relationships amplified the Great Depression. We demonstrate this by developing a new measure of lending relationships that can be calculated from widely available data at any level of aggregation. Our approach exploits differences in the responsiveness of loan rates to bank funding costs and is supported by historical evidence and theoretical arguments. The new measure reveals that the marginal impact of bank suspensions on economic activity was higher in more relationship-intensive areas, providing the first formal evidence that relationship lending propagated the real effects of banking sector distress in the early 1930s.