Market failure and the need for stronger state involvement in the economy has become the dominant perspective in the interpretation of the subprime crisis. After providing a brief description of the various stages of the crisis, the paper challenges this view by showing how monetary, fiscal and...

During the ongoing financial crisis the analysis of similar historical crises has gained more and more attention among economic researchers and forecasters. Existing studies, however, do not tackle the immense heterogeneity that is present in cross-country samples in a formal and consistent way....