Traditional growth theory does not include financing and suggests that growth will be continuous. In fact, however, growth is often discontinuous. In some periods, there are booms with rapid growth that end in financial crises with low growth for sustained periods. This paper argues that the...

Financial crises have occurred for many centuries. They are often preceded by a credit boom and a rise in real estate and other asset prices, as in the current crisis. They are also often associated with severe disruption in the real economy. This paper surveys the theoretical and empirical...

Banks are intrinsically fragile because of their role as liquidity providers. This results in under-provision of liquidity. We analyze the e¤ect of government guarantees on the interconnection between banks' liquidity creation and likelihood of runs in a model of global games, where banks.and...

This important volume presents key contributions to the study of financial crises from many different areas of economics. The book offers an economic history of financial crises, empirical studies of crises in the modern era, and classic works on the theory of banking crises. It also covers...

In this paper, we examine the empirical link between the structural characteristics of the financial system and financial crisis. We find that there is a significant short-term reversal in development of the banking sector and stock market during both bank crises and market crashes, with the...