In a seminal 1972 paper, Robert M. May asked: "Will a Large Complex System Be Stable?" and argued that stability (of a broad class of random linear systems) decreases with increasing complexity, sparking a revolution in our understanding of ecosystem dynamics. Twenty-five years later, May,...

After years of stagnation and political cataclysms, Georgia tried to recover by launching radical economic and political reforms starting in 2004. The results of the reforms appeared to be impressive. The country's GDP has more than doubled; the total volume of bank deposits is five times what it...

Die EU befindet sich seit 2008 im Krisenmodus. Die Sehnsucht nach der alten Normalität ist das große politische Ziel, aber eine Rückkehr zum Status quo ante wäre nicht wirklich wünschenswert. Leider besitzt die europäische Politik kein Konzept für die Zukunft der EU nach der...

We show that political booms, measured by the rise in governments’ popularity, predict financial crises above and beyond other better-known early warning indicators, such as credit booms. This predictive power, however, only holds in emerging economies. We show that governments in emerging...

The global financial crisis of 2007-09 has led to an intensive research program analyzing a wide range of issues related to financial crises. This paper presents a summary of a forthcoming book, Financial Crises: Causes, Consequences, and Policy Responses, that includes 19 contributions...

This dissertation was written by Christopher Weber during his time as a research assistant at the Center for Economic Studies (CES) at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) Munich. It was handed in at the department of Economics at the LMU Munich in July 2016. The goal of the thesis is to...

Der Ausbruch der weltweiten Finanzkrise wird zwar immer wieder auf das Jahr 2008 mit dem Zusammenbruch von Lehman Brothers und den daraus folgenden Schockwellen terminiert, doch eigentlich begann die Krise bereits 2007 mit dem Platzen der Immobilienblase. Es folgten Bankenzusammenbrüche, die...

The recent crisis of 2008 has revealed several challenges for the economic science, sparking a considerable amount of debate regarding the profession of economists and the role of macroeconomics and monetary policies. The first question that arose was why there was a lack of anticipation of the...

This paper considers the extent to which inadequate corporate governance was a contributory factor to the financial market crash. It examines the experience of selected failed banks, with emphasis on the corporate governance structure in place at each firm, and the background and expertise of...

After years of stagnation and political cataclysms, Georgia tried to recover by launching radical economic and political reforms starting in 2004. The results of the reforms appeared to be impressive. The country's GDP has more than doubled; the total volume of bank deposits is five times what it...