During the ongoing financial crisis the analysis of similar historical crises has gained more and more attention among economic researchers and forecasters. Existing studies, however, do not tackle the immense heterogeneity that is present in cross-country samples in a formal and consistent way....

This paper compares the depth of the Recent Crisis and the Great Depression. We use a new data set to compare the drop in activity in the industrialized countries for seven activity indicators. This is done under the assumption that the Recent Crisis leveled off in mid-2009 for production and...

This paper examines the comparative response of multinationals and domestic firms to an economic crisis, using the empirical setting of a well defined case of economic slowdown in Chile. We find that employment in manufacturing plants has been drastically reduced during the economic crisis. Our...

The recent financial crises pointed out the central role of public and private debt in modern economies. However, even if debt is a recurring topic in discussions about the current economic situation, economic modelling does not take into account debt as one of the crucial determinants of...

The outburst of the 2008 global economic crisis sparked a myriad of criticism on mainstream neoclassical economic theory, held responsible for not even have considered the possibility of the kind of collapse that the subprime mortgage meltdown unleashed. In this paper, it is argued that what...

This paper analyses fiscal policy for several economies in Latin America, from the early nineties to the 2009 crisis. We present original estimates of cyclically-adjusted public revenues for Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay implementing the standardised...

The paper investigates a set of possible leading indicators for Euroland's business cycle using aggregated quarterly data. The theoretical plausibility, the behavior at business cycle turning points and the mean leads are analyzed. Furthermore, evidence from cross-correlations and...

We investigate whether recoveries following normal recessions differ from recoveries following recessions that are associated with either banking crises or housing crises. Using a parametric panel framework that allows for a bounce-back in the level of output during the recovery, we find that...

This paper reveals that German firms with working time accounts (WTAs) show a similar separation and hiring behavior in response to revenue changes as firms without WTAs. This finding casts doubt on the popular hypothesis that WTAs were the key driver of the unusually small increase in German...