In the wake of the Global Financial Crisis, a significant research effort has been made to better understand the links between household debt levels, financial stability risks, and the ongoing implications of the ‘debt overhang’ for economic growth. However, accurately measuring the...

The paper explores the link between financial sentiment and private debt, using Keynes’s A Treatise on Money as a conceptual backdrop. In responding to his critics after the publication of his General Theory Keynes famously talked about unexpected, violent changes in conventional asset...