Traditionally, economic growth and business cycles have been treated independently. However, the dependence of GDP levels on its history of shocks, what economists refer to as 'hysteresis,' argues for unifying the analysis of growth and cycles. In this paper, we review the recent empirical and...

This paper analyses several severe financial crises observed in the history of capitalism which led to a longer period of stagnation or low growth. Comparative case studies of the Great Depression, the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s and the Japanese crisis of the 1990s and 2000s are...

During the Great Depression, countries endowed with abundant gold reserves were not able to leave the gold standard and devalue their currencies until the mid-1930s. Instead, they were forced to go down the road of internal devaluation. We analyze the policies of the Swiss authorities by...