German banks’ nationwide lending allows cross-city identification of crisis effects.

Evidence

Since German banks lent nationwide in the 1930s (in contrast to the US), we can exploit cross-sectional variation in firms’ and cities’ pre-crisis exposure to banks to identify the effect of the banking crisis on voting. — Sebastian Doerr et al., Financial Crises and Political…, 76

Categorization

• XREF: Contrast with the US’s geographically concentrated bank lending underpins the cross-sectional identification strategy the reader wants to verify. — connects to: Nazi vote share gained an extra 2.5 percentage points in Danat-exposed cities. — Sebastian Doerr et al., Financial Crises and Political…, 96

Related

• Danatbank-exposed cities saw a 2.9-percentage-point extra rise in Nazi vote share. (similarity 0.85)
• Nazi gains in Danat-exposed cities emerged only after the bank’s collapse (similarity 0.84)
• Nazi vote share gained an extra 2.5 percentage points in Danat-exposed cities. (similarity 0.83)
• The Danat collapse boosted Nazi votes beyond nationwide crisis effects (similarity 0.83)
• Exposure to Danatbank failure raised Nazi vote shares by roughly 3 percentage points (similarity 0.82)
• Danatbank exposure raised Nazi vote share across multiple federal elections. (similarity 0.81)
• Continuous exposure measures confirm Danat exposure boosted Nazi voting (similarity 0.81)
• An unpublicized bank failure did not radicalize voters despite similar economic damage. (similarity 0.81)
• Danat exposure raised Nazi voting 1.7 to 2.5 percentage points across robustness checks. (similarity 0.81)
• Only exposure to Danatbank, not Dresdner, raised Nazi voting despite identical economic losses. (similarity 0.80)
• Prior anti-Semitism roughly doubled the radicalizing effect of bank distress. (similarity 0.80)
• Danat exposure radicalized Nazi voting beyond the income losses it caused (similarity 0.79)
• Identical bank-failure income losses radicalized voters only where media singled out the bank (similarity 0.79)
• Nazi gains in exposed cities appeared only after the banking crisis, not before. (similarity 0.79)
• Falling local incomes from the banking crisis raised Nazi vote share substantially (similarity 0.79)