This authoritative collection of key papers provides an overview of the subject from its beginnings through to current scholarship in this area.

Dialogue on global warming has progressed from the Kyoto Protocol to meetings in Copenhagen and Cancun and will soon resume in meetings in South Africa. Some observers consider the Copenhagen conference a failure. EU representatives, in contrast, present an optimistic evaluation of achieving a...

Recent history suggests that many boom-bust cycles are naturally driven by linkages between the credit market and asset prices. Additionally, new structured securities have been developed, e.g., MBS, CDOs, and CDS, which have acted as instruments of risk transfer. We show that there is a certain...

This paper explores long wave theory, including Kondratieff's theory of cycles in production and relative prices; Kuznets's theory of cycles arising from infrastructure investments; Schumpeter's theory of cycles due to waves of technological innovation; Goodwin's theory of cyclical growth based...

Recent history suggests that many boom–bust cycles are naturally driven by linkages between the credit market and asset prices. Additionally, new structured securities have been developed, e.g., MBS, CDOs, and CDS, which have acted as instruments of risk transfer. We show that there is a...

Following the lead of Merton (1974), recent research has focused on the relationship of credit risk to firm value. Although this has usually been done for a single firm, the growth of structured finance, which necessarily involves the correlation between included securities, has spurred interest...