Global crisis has underlined the essentiality of deepening our understanding and knowledge about the financial system. Accordingly, recent debates on macroeconomic policies focused exclusively on the financial system. This survey aims at contributing to the efforts on expanding our existing...

As a result of the current global financial crisis, in 2009 the world economy is likely to experience the largest contraction since World War II and the unemployment rate to reach historical highs in many countries. The fact that the current global crisis is originated from the U.S. and followed...