We examine the hypothesis that capacity can be permanently damaged by financial, particularly banking, crises. A model which allows a financial crisis to have both a short‐run effect on the growth rate of labor productivity and a long‐run effect on its level is estimated on 61 countries over 1954–2010. A banking crisis as defined by Reinhart and Rogoff reduces the long‐run level of GDP per worker, and also that of capital per worker, by on average 1.1 percent, for each year that the crisis lasts; it also reduces the TFP level by 0.8%. The long run, negative effect on the level of GDP per capita, 1.8 percent, is substantially larger. So there is also a hit to employment. The effects on labor productivity, capital and TFP are larger in developing than in developed countries; the opposite is the case for employment.