I use the global crisis of 1914 as a window onto the phenomenon of investor reaction to complex news — such as sudden political upheaval. Based on a novel database of all stocks traded on the NYSE during 1914, along with “real-time” news accounts from major newspapers, I show that NYSE...

On August 11, 2021, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a 5.4% per year increase in the CPI for the third consecutive month, intensifying the ongoing debate about whether high inflation will prove temporary or more lasting. This paper seeks to inform this debate by evaluating the...

The objective of this paper is to examine the absolute and risk-adjusted effects on distribution rates and total wealth created by adding loss-limiting trend following strategies to buy and hold portfolios. Using 150 years of equity and bond data, we found that applying trend following to...

Credit score cutoff rules result in very similar potential borrowers being treated differently by mortgage lenders. Recent research has used variation induced by these rules to investigate the connection between securitization and lender moral hazard in the recent financial crisis. However, the...

During the recent financial crisis, there was a dramatic spike, across all industries, in the volatility of individual firm share prices after adjustment for movements in the market as a whole. In this Article, we demonstrate that a similar spike has occurred with each major downturn in the...

There is a large body of literature analyzing the onset of the Great Depression or the factors influencing economic recovery in the 1930s, especially the New Deal. The role of income inequality before and during the Great Depression, however, has almost never been discussed thoroughly. This...

In the immediate aftermath of the current financial crisis in the United States the response has been to resolve small and medium size banks, while large banks experiencing financial trouble have been given both direct and indirect government support. This, however, has resulted in a number of...

This article questions the data Krugman uses to suggest that the Federal Reserve's recent doubling of the monetary base in five months was in any sense comparable to (1) what the Fed did in 1929-39 and (2) what the Bank of Japan did during the Lost Decade. I find that monetary policy was not...

In this article, I review the role of the IMF in the global crisis and argue that the Fund has emerged as a powerful institutional force, providing analysis and recommendations that have served as the basis of official action on several fronts. By contrast, the Fund was barking up the wrong tree...

The effect of financial crises on innovation is an unsettled and important question for economic growth, but one difficult to answer with modern data. Using a differences-in-differences design surrounding the Great Depression, we document that local distress caused by the Depression led to a...