The confluence of three trends in the U.S. residential housing market - rising home prices, declining interest rates, and near-frictionless refinancing opportunities - led to vastly increased systemic risk in the financial system. Individually, each of these trends is benign, but when they occur...

This paper assesses the OECD’s projections for GDP growth and inflation during the global financial crisis and recovery, focussing on lessons that can be learned. The projections repeatedly over-estimated growth, failing to anticipate the extent of the slowdown and later the weak pace of the...

Ireland has experienced a series of interlocking banking, fiscal, unemployment and political crises since 2007. We detail the challenges involved in modeling individual moments of the crisis through the lens of the balance sheets and transactions matrices between sectors of the Irish society. A...

We propose a predictor of market bubbles, crashes and corrections that is based on the relationship between the following two ratios: (Market value of the firm compared to its intrinsic value, MV/IV) and the (return on capital of the firm versus its cost of capital, R/C*). We apply the model to...

"Some 20 years after German reunification, living conditions and the economic base in East Germany are approaching that of West Germany in many areas. In view of this anniversary and against the backdrop of the global financial crisis that intensified in autumn 2008, this research report uses...

This paper introduces a Divisia monetary aggregate for Germany and explores its information content for the Great Recession. Divisia money and the corresponding simple sum aggregate are highly correlated in normal times but begin to diverge before the crisis. Out of sample forecast analysis and...

Is there a link between loose monetary conditions, credit growth, house price booms, and financial instability? This paper analyzes the role of interest rates and credit in driving house price booms and busts with data spanning 140 years of modern economic history in the advanced economies. We...

The Great Recession endured by the main industrialized countries during the period 2008-2009, in the wake of the financial and banking crisis, has pointed out the major role of the financial sector on macroeconomic fluctuations. In this respect, many researchers have started to reconsider the...

This paper presents the results of a counterfactual exercise that aims at quantifying the contribution to the evolution of bad debts made by the two recessions that have hit the Italian economy since 2008. The counterfactual simulations are performed using the Bank of Italy's Quarterly Model...

This paper provides an outlook for the Indian economy in the light of the extraordinary global financial crisis, that started in the US, but which has now transformed into the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. The Indian economy was slowing down even before the onset of global...