Lucas (1990) argued that it was a paradox that more capital does not flow from rich countries to poor countries. He rejected the standard explanation of expropriation risk and argued that paucity of capital flows to poor countries must instead be rooted in externalities in human capital...

This paper presents evidence that public debts in the advanced economies have surged in recent years to levels not recorded since the end of World War II, surpassing the heights reached during the First World War and the Great Depression. At the same time, private debt levels, particularly those...

This paper offers a quot;panoramicquot; analysis of the history of financial crises dating from England's fourteenth-century default to the current United States sub-prime financial crisis. Our study is based on a new dataset that spans all regions. It incorporates a number of important credit...

Two centuries of Greek debt crises highlight the pitfalls of relying on external financing. Since its independence in 1829, the Greek government has defaulted four times on its external creditors – with striking historical parallels. Each crisis is preceded by a period of heavy borrowing from...

The Ds: Sharp economic downturns follow banking crises; with government revenues falling, fiscal deficits worsen; deficits lead to debt; as debts pile up rating downgrades follow. For the most fortunate countries it does not end in default

Sovereign credit ratings play an important part in determining countries' access to international capital markets and the terms of that access. In principle, there is no reason to expect that sovereign credit ratings should systematically predict currency crises. In practice, in emerging market...

Capital flow and commodity cycles have long been connected with economic crises. Sparse historical data, however, has made it difficult to connect their timing. We date turning points in global capital flows and commodity prices across two centuries and provide estimates from alternative data...