Using AI to Let History Speak About Bank Runs

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July 7, 2026

Bank Runs versus Bank Failures

We consider three types of distress events: bank runs, suspensions, and failures. Different combinations of events can characterize different types of distress episodes. For instance, there can be bank runs that involve bank failure and permanent bank closure. There can also be distress episodes with a bank run but no bank failure, distinguishing between those resolved with and without suspension. Finally, there can be episodes in which a bank fails but there is no record of a run. Note that by construction a bank must suspend before or at failure. Thus, any failure will also be a suspension.

The figure below shows a Venn diagram with counts of the three types of distress episodes. Each observation represents an episode of bank distress for a particular bank, with the same bank possibly being subject to distress at different points in time over the sample period. During the 1863-1934 period, our dataset contains more than 3,000 bank run episodes. A first major insight from our data is that the majority of bank runs do not involve failure. We find 1,906 runs without failure and 1,515 runs with failure. We also find 13,069 episodes involving a suspension, and 10,330 episodes involving a failure. Thus, the majority of distress episodes recorded in newspapers involve a bank failure.

The Intersection of Bank Runs, Bank Suspensions, and Bank Failures

Source: Authors’ calculations.

Bank Runs from 1863-1935

The chart below shows the rate of runs in the time series by plotting the number of runs as a fraction of the total number of banks in each year. We focus on national banks so that we can calculate rates relative to the total number of banks. The rate of runs spikes during the major crises years: 1873, 1884, 1893, 1907 (to a lesser extent), and the Great Depression. This incidence of runs confirms prominent narratives of crises in the pre-FDIC era (e.g., Calomiris and Gorton, 1991; Wicker, 1996, 2006).

Bank Runs With and Without Failure from 1863 through 1934

Source: Authors’ calculations. Note: Based on a sample of national banks.

The chart also distinguishes between bank runs with and without failure. Runs without failure are especially pronounced during major banking crises, especially during the panics of the national banking era. For example, the Panic of 1893 featured a particularly large number of runs without failure (but with temporary suspensions). Runs with failure spiked during the Panic of 1893 and the Great Depression.

The Geography of Bank Runs

The animated map below shows how bank runs ripple across the country over time. Each episode appears as a glowing dot at its geographic location on its recorded date, fading over the course of the following year.

The dynamics of bank runs from 1863 through 1934 illustrate several patterns immediately. First, the geographic center of gravity of bank distress shifts over the decades. Early episodes are concentrated along the Eastern Seaboard: New York, Philadelphia, and the major commercial cities. As the country expands westward, so does banking distress. By the 1890s, runs are appearing in the Great Plains, the Mountain West, and the Pacific Coast, reflecting the expansion of the banking system into new agricultural and mining frontiers.

Second, the systemic crises show up as nationwide waves. During the Panic of 1873, for instance, dots first cluster in New York City, the epicenter of the financial system, and then radiate outward to Chicago, St. Louis, New Orleans, and smaller cities across the interior. The 1893 crisis, in contrast to the other panics of the National Banking Era, originated in the interior and saw more runs in the West and South, consistent with distress in railroads, silver mines, and agriculture in that panic. In 1907, the crisis again starts in New York but spreads rapidly through the national correspondent banking network.

Third, the map reveals the regional character of many episodes that do not rise to the level of a national panic. The U.S. banking system of the time contained thousands of small, under-diversified banks. Local economic downturns, crop failures, or exposure to commodity price declines could generate bank runs and failures without necessarily showing up in the national narrative. The 1920s, often remembered as a decade of prosperity, are marked on the map by a steady stream of bank failures in the agricultural Midwest and South, foreshadowing the surge in bank failures during the Great Depression.

What Comes Next

This new database on bank runs opens the door to answering a range of questions that were previously difficult to study. In our companion post, we show how we use the data to investigate when and why runs have historically led to bank failure, and discuss how these insights affect policy discussions.

Chart DataEXCEL

Sergio Correia is a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.

Stephan Luck is a financial research advisor in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Research and Statistics Group.

Emil Verner is the Lemelson Professor of Management and Financial Economics and a professor of finance at MIT Sloan School of Management.

How to cite this post:

Sergio Correia, Stephan Luck, and Emil Verner, “Using AI to Let History Speak About Bank Runs,” Federal Reserve Bank of New York Liberty Street Economics, July 7, 2026, https://doi.org/10.59576/lse.20260707a BibTeX: View |

@article{CorreiaLuckVerner2026, author={Correia, Sergio and Luck, Stephan and Verner, Emil}, title={Using AI to Let History Speak About Bank Runs}, journal={Liberty Street Economics}, note={Liberty Street Economics Blog}, number={July 7}, year={2026}, url={https://doi.org/10.59576/lse.20260707a} }

Disclaimer The views expressed in this post are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York or the Federal Reserve System. Any errors or omissions are the responsibility of the author(s).