Contagion is usually defined as correlation between markets in excess of what would be implied by economic fundamentals; however, there is considerable disagreement regarding the definitions of the fundamentals, how the fundamentals might differ across countries, and the mechanisms that link the...

Questionnaires were sent out at the time of the October 19, 1987 stock market crash to both individual and institutional investors inquiring about their behavior during the crash. Nearly 1000 responses were received. The survey results show that: 1. no news story or rumor appearing on the 19th...

Long-term data for 30 countries up to 2006 reveal 232 stock-market crashes (multi-year real returns of -25% or less) and 100 depressions (multi-year macroeconomic declines of 10% or more), with 71 of the cases matched by timing. The United States has two of the matched events--the Great...

We use the founding of the Federal Reserve as a historical experiment to provide some insight into whether a lender of last resort can stabilize financial markets. Following the Panic of 1907, Congress passed two measures that established a lender of last resort in the United States: (1) the...

We analyze how investor expectations about economic growth and stock returns changed during the February-March 2020 stock market crash induced by the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as during the subsequent partial stock market recovery. We surveyed retail investors who are clients of Vanguard at...

We examine individual stock sales from 2008 to 2009 using population tax return data. The share of sales by the top 0.1 percent of income recipients and other top income groups rose sharply following the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy and remained elevated throughout the financial crisis. Sales by...

We study the role of various trader types in providing liquidity in spot and futures markets based on complete order-book and transactions data as well as cross-market trader identifiers from the National Stock Exchange of India for a single large stock. During normal times, short-term traders...

We study crashes using data from 101 global stock markets from 1692 to 2015. Extremely large, annual stock market declines are typically followed by positive returns. This is not true for smaller declines. This pattern does not appear to be driven by institutional frictions, financial crises,...

We examine the short- and long-run effects of financial liberalization on capital markets. To do so, we construct a new comprehensive chronology of financial liberalization in 28 mature and emerging economies since 1973. We also construct an algorithm to identify booms and busts in stock market...

Standard tests find that no bubbles are present in the stock price data for the last one hundred years. In contrast., historical accounts, focusing on briefer periods, point to the stock market of 1928-1929 as a classic example of a bubble. While previous studies have restricted their attention...