Currently, many monetary and fiscal policy measures are aimed at preventing the financial market meltdown that started in the US subprime sector and has spread worldwide as a great recession. Although some slow recovery appears to be on the horizon, it is worthwhile exploring the fragility and...

In the last months, the world's economies were confronted with the largest economic recession since the Great Depression. The occurrence of a worldwide financial market meltdown as a consequence originally stemming from of the crisis in the US subprime housing sector was only prevented by...

"The macroeconomic development of most major industrial economies is characterised by boom-bust cycles. Normally such boom-bust cycles are driven by specific sectors of the economy. In the financial meltdown of the years 2007-2009 it was the credit sector and the real-estate sector that were the...