Spain has experienced many financial crises through its history. These financial crises have varied origins. However, they do have common threads. The current recession and subsequent debt crisis follow the same pattern. The fiscal and monetary policies of the Spanish government have played a...

This paper analyzes the causes and implications of recent financial crises. Financial crises in general lead to changes in both theory and practice of economics. The paper takes an historical overview. The global consensus of economic theory during the 20th century is discussed. The paper...

The European Union was created to promote economic, cultural, and regional prosperity. However, the Global Financial Crisis demonstrates that its economic institutions are flawed. While each sovereign state in the Eurozone forfeits the control of its money supply, the lack of a common fiscal...

The economic history of the United States is riddled with financial crises and banking panics. During the nineteenth-century, eight major such episodes occurred. In the period following World War II, some believed that these crises would no longer happen, and that the U.S. had reached a time of...

We show that political booms, measured by the rise in governments’ popularity, predict financial crises above and beyond other better-known early warning indicators, such as credit booms. This predictive power, however, only holds in emerging economies. We show that governments in emerging...

Credit booms usually precede financial crises. However, some credit booms end in a crisis (bad booms) and other booms do not (good booms). We document that, while all booms start with an increase in the growth of Total Factor Productivity (TFP), such growth falls much faster subsequently for bad...

The examination of U.S. crises reveals that the current financial crisis follows past patterns. An investment bubble creates excess demand for new financing instruments. During the railroad bubbles of the nineteenth century loans were issued at a pace higher than many companies could pay back....