Economists in the public are accused of propagating highly professional, but unrealistic theories that mislead market agents and policy makers to place too much confidence in rational behaviour and market equilibrium. The paper analyses to what extent the US banking crisis and the euro crisis...

This paper examines the time-profile of the impact of systemic banking crises on GDP and industrial production using a panel of 24 countries over the inter-war period and compares this to the post-war experience of these countries. We show that banking crises have effects that induce medium-term...

This paper discusses the causes and impacts of the financial crisis of 2007–2010 and examines the reforms aimed at the prevention of its recurrence. The causes to be discussed include housing and commodity bubbles, easy credit conditions, subprime lending, predatory lending, deregulation and...

The article is an introduction to the new issue of the Journal. It provides an overview of the current economic and financial situation and summarises the main topics dealt with by the following articles

‘Global financial crisis' is an inaccurate description of the current upheaval in the world's financial markets. The initial banking crisis did not affect all countries to the same degree. Notably, while the US and UK banking systems were badly hit, those of the other two major Anglo-Saxon...

Financial crises precede deep and prolonged recessions. Political leaders face enormous challenges when confronting such dire economic situation, and they frequently have to face the possibility of losing power. In order to avoid this outcome, democratic and autocratic leaders may use war as a...

Between the 1880s and the 1930s, three “regulatory cycles” can be identified in Italy. In the underlying model, each financial crisis gives rise to regulatory changes, which are circumvented in due time by financial innovation, that can then contribute to the outbreak of a new financial...

We analyze the effectiveness of government policies aimed at shoring up banks' financial conditions during the 2008-2009 financial crisis. Governments injected into troubled institutions massive amounts of fresh capital and/or guaranteed bank assets and liabilities. We employ event study...

This paper examines government policies aimed at rescuing banks from the effects of the great financial crisis of 2007-2009. To delimit the scope of the analysis, we concentrate on the fiscal side of interventions and ignore, by design, the monetary policy reaction to the crisis. The policy...