This paper analyzes the causes and implications of recent financial crises. Financial crises in general lead to changes in both theory and practice of economics. The paper takes an historical overview. The global consensus of economic theory during the 20th century is discussed. The paper...

Accommodative monetary policy during the financial crisis was instrumental in preventing a deeper recession. Views differ, however, on how long such measures should be kept in place. At the heart of this debate is the notion that a protracted period of policy accommodation could create...

Historically, periods of high indebtedness have been associated with a rising incidence of default or restructuring of public and private debts. A subtle type of debt restructuring takes the form of 'financial repression.' Financial repression includes directed lending to government by captive...

Historically, periods of high indebtedness have been associated with a rising incidence of default or restructuring of public and private debts. A subtle type of debt restructuring takes the form of "financial repression." Financial repression includes directed lending to government by captive...

The stylized facts of government finance in the Group of Seven (G-7) industrial countries show that revenues lag real GDP procyclically, while government spending in most cases fails to lead the economy procyclically. This finding is not confined to transfers but also applies to the wage...

Using the U.S. Current Population Survey data, this paper compares the distributional impacts of the Pandemic Crisis and those of the Global Financial Crisis in terms of (i) worker characteristics, (ii) job characteristics-'social' (where individuals interact to consume goods), 'teleworkable'...

The COVID-19 pandemic and the associated government mandated shutdowns caused a historic shock to the U.S. economy and a disproportionate job loss concentrated among the working class. While an unprecedented social safety net policy response successfully offset earnings loses among lower-wage...

We hypothesize that local economic discomfort influences investors’ risk aversion, leading to cross-sectional variation in risk premia in segmented equity markets. To test this assertion, we employ the misery index (MI)—which aggregates both unemployment and inflation rates—as a gauge of...

This paper studies the spread of the Black Death as a proxy for the flow of medieval trade between 1346 and 1351. The Black Death struck most areas of Europe and the wider Mediterranean. Based on a modified version of the gravity model, we estimate the speed (in kilometers per day) of...

Nearly a half-century before the financial crisis of 2008, there was another time when reforming the world monetary system was on everyone’s lips and many academics and policy makers were developing and attempting to promote plans for its reconstruction before illiquidity, speculation and loss...