When banks fail, host economies often suffer, leading governments to intervene with bailouts despite political unpopularity. A new animated map visualizes banking crises across 46 major economies since 1870, showing each crisis resolved through policy interventions like central bank liquidity support or liability guarantees. Green bubbles mark crisis events, while pink and blue bubbles represent government and private sector recapitalizations as shares of pre-crisis book equity.

Users can filter for government-only recapitalizations and explore detailed data by pausing the animation and clicking individual bubbles. The map draws from a paper by Matthew Baron, Luc Laeven, Julien Pénasse, and Yevhenii Usenko published in the February 2024 issue of the Quarterly Journal of Economics, which also examines permanent capital losses and long-term bank performance declines following crises. The research highlights that non-performing loan writedowns, rather than panic-driven asset sales, are the primary cause of bank failures.

Policymakers can use these findings to better anticipate and respond to systemic banking risks.