Traditionally, economic growth and business cycles have been treated independently. However, the dependence of GDP levels on its history of shocks, what economists refer to as 'hysteresis,' argues for unifying the analysis of growth and cycles. In this paper, we review the recent empirical and...

This paper reviews the ""Austrian"" theory of the business cycle first proposed by Friedrich Hayek in the 1920s. His theory claimed that credit creation by monetary authorities would push investment beyond society''s long-term willingness to save, creating a mismatch between supply and demand...

While the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting all countries, output losses vary considerably across countries. We provide a first analysis of robust determinants of observed initial output losses using model-averaging techniques-Weighted Average Least Squares and Bayesian Model Averaging. The results...

One of the most puzzling facts in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) is that output across advanced and emerging economies recovered at a much slower rate than anticipated by most forecasting agencies. This paper delves into the mechanics behind the observed slow recovery and the...

This paper takes stock of the global economic recovery a decade after the 2008 financial crisis. Output losses after the crisis appear to be persistent, irrespective of whether a country suffered a banking crisis in 2007-08. Sluggish investment was a key channel through which these losses...

This paper presents a new dataset on the dynamics of non-performing loans (NPLs) during 88 banking crises since 1990. The data show similarities across crises during NPL build-ups but less so during NPL resolutions. We find a close relationship between NPL problems-elevated and unresolved...

The world economy is on the brink of a profound crisis. The threat of global deflation and the emergence of chronic excess global capacity characterizes the contemporary phase of crisis and stagnation. Lucarelli argues that these pathological features of globalization acquire a remorseless logic...

The functioning of the gold standard has recently been at the heart of explanations of the interwar depression, particularly as a result of the research of Professors Barry Eichengreen and Peter Temin. In The World Economy and National Economies in the Interwar Slump the interaction between the...

Financial globalization was off to a rocky start in emerging economies hit by Sudden Stops in the 1990s. The surge in foreign reserves since then is viewed as a New Merchantilism in which reserves are a war-chest for defense against Sudden Stops. We conduct a quantitative assessment of this...

Using panel data for a large number of countries, we find that economic contractions are not followed by offsetting fast recoveries. Trend output lost is not regained, on average. Wars, crises, and other negative shocks lead to absolute divergence and lower long-run growth, whereas we find...