The paper addresses the following questions: what type of crisis is this? How can we put the events together in our minds so that we have a coherent, complete picture of the crisis? How can we put this crisis in its historical context and what are the consequences for the future of our society?...

Financial crises are traditionally analyzed as purely economic phenomena. The political economy of financial booms and busts remains both under-emphasized and limited to isolated episodes. The policy discussions and economic literature generated by the most recent wave of financial crises have...

Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850) was a French thinker who did most of his writing in the last six years of his life. One of his major contributions to economic thought was his application of opportunity cost to a wide range of economic policies. The present paper uses the Bastiat approach to...

Financial crises are traditionally analyzed as purely economic phenomena. The political economy of financial booms and busts remains both under-emphasized and limited to isolated episodes. This paper examines the political economy of financial policy during ten of the most infamous financial...

On February 12, 2010, SUERF, the Oesterreichische Nationalbank and the Bankwissenschaftliche Gesellschaft continued their established tradition of jointly organised conferences. As evidenced also by the 115 conference participants, this year's subject of "Contagion and Spillovers – New...

The Irish bailout highlighted two major issues about the involvement of multilateral agencies in Europe: one was their desire for visible short-term solutions and second is a significant disregard of the political institutions with which they were forced to engage. The Irish case study and more...

This paper provides causal evidence on the effect of credit crunches on political polarization. We combine data on bank-firm connections and electoral outcomes at the city-level during the 2008-2014 Spanish Financial Crisis. First, we show that firms in a relationship with weak banks experience...

This paper provides causal evidence on the effect of credit crunches on political polarization. We combine data on bank-firm connections and electoral outcomes at the city-level during the 2008-2014 Spanish Financial Crisis. First, we show that firms in a relationship with weak banks experience...

Economists' principal explanations of the subprime crisis differ from those developed by noneconomists in that the latter see it as rooted in the US legacy of racial/ethnic inequality, and especially in racial residential segregation, whereas the former ignore race. This paper traces this...

Starting with the framework of New Institutional Economics, this Comment examines the institutional arrangements of Chinese and U.S. governance, and then scrutinizes their respective policy responses to the financial collapse of 2008. The latent thesis is that, notwithstanding differences in...