I discuss some of the challenges and possible responses of the economics and finance profession following the 2008-2009 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. I do this in the context of three examples. The first example draws on the Bank of England’s forward guidance on interest rates by...

It is well known fact that all good things, as also bad things, come to an end and business cycles pass through good and bad economic times. Economically 2010 was a year of transition from economic recession to recovery. Economies were improving in some countries and industries were showing...

Walter Bagehot's putative principles of lending in liquidity crises — to lend freely to solvent banks with good collateral but at penalty rates — have served as a theoretical basis for thinking about the lender of last resort for close to 100 years, while simultaneously providing...

We model a safe asset market with investors valuing safety, investors valuing liquidity, and constrained dealers. While safety investors and liquidity investors can interact symbiotically with offsetting trades in times of stress, we show that liquidity investors’ strategic interaction harbors...

Firms in emerging markets are exposed to severe financial frictions and credit constraints, that are exacerbated by the sudden stop of capital inflows. Can monetary policy offset this external credit squeeze? We show that although this may be the case during moderate contractions (or in partial...

We draw on a comprehensive set of data of all registered firms in Thailand to examine whether firm size affects the relation between leverage and operating performance during the global financial crisis of 2007–2009. From a data set of 496,430 firm-year observations of a sample of 170,013...

This paper examines five possible explanations for the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009, using data for the United States and the eurozone. Of these five hypotheses, four are not supported by the data, while the fifth appears reasonable.