This paper presents a model of the macroeconomy that reformulates what I take to be two important ideas from Keynes General Theory. The first is that there may be a continuum of steady state unemployment rates. The second is that beliefs select an equilibrium. I argue that search and matching...

This paper shows that the Russian 1998 crisis had a big impact on capital flows to Emerging Market Economies, EMs, especially in Latin America, and that the impact of the Russian shock differs quite markedly across EMs. To illustrate this statement, we compare the polar cases of Chile and...

This paper provides an historical perspective on the crisis of 2007-2008. The crisis is part of a perennial pattern. It has echoes in earlier big international financial crises which were triggered by events in the U.S. financial system. Examples include the crises of 1857, 1893 1907 and...

This paper offers a "panoramic" analysis of the history of financial crises dating from England's fourteenth-century default to the current United States sub-prime financial crisis. Our study is based on a new dataset that spans all regions. It incorporates a number of important credit episodes...

Herbert Hoover. I develop a theory of labor market failure for the Depression based on Hoover's industrial labor program that provided industry with protection from unions in return for keeping nominal wages fixed. I find that the theory accounts for much of the depth of the Depression and for...