Newly developed historical time series on public debt, along with data on external debts, allow a deeper analysis of the debt cycles underlying serial debt and banking crises. We test three related hypotheses at both "world" aggregate levels and on an individual country basis. First, external...

We examine the evolution of real per capita GDP around 100 systemic banking crises. Part of the costs of these crises owes to the protracted nature of recovery. On average, it takes about 8 years to reach the pre-crisis level of income; the median is about 6.5 years. Five to six years after the...

The Federal Reserve's mandate has evolved considerably over the organization's hundred-year history. It was changed from an initial focus in 1913 on financial stability, to fiscal financing in World War II and its aftermath, to a strong anti-inflation focus from the late 1970s, and then back to...

Political business cycle theories generally rely on nominal rigidities and voter myopia. This paper offers an equilibrium theory that preserves some basic insights from earlier models, though with significant refinements. The "political budget cycle" emphasized here is in fiscal policy rather...