With recourse to archival, printed primary, and secondary sources, this paper reconstructs global real interest rates on an annual basis going back to the 14th century, covering 78% of advanced economy GDP over time. I show that across successive monetary and fiscal regimes, and a variety of...

This paper provides an overview of the dramatic changes in the UK banking sector over the 1989–2013 period, seen through the lens of a newly assembled database built from banks' regulatory reports. This database, which we refer to as the Historical Banking Regulatory Database (HBRD), covers...

We use a new regulatory dataset to measure the intensity competition in the UK deposit-taking sector. The novelty of this study is two-fold. First, the dataset allows us to explore trends in competition intensity over an extended, 24-year period from 1989 to 2013 using data for UK-regulated...

This paper presents a new dataset for the annual risk-free rate in both nominal and real terms going back to the 13th century. On this basis, we establish for the first time a long-term comparative investigation of ‘bond bull markets'. It is shown that the global risk-free rate in July 2016...

With the aim to provide a detailed understanding of global financial cycles and their relevance over time, we analyse co-movement in credit, house prices, equity prices, and interest rates across 17 advanced economies over 130 years. Using a time-varying dynamic factor model, we observe global...