Machine learning tools are well known for their success in prediction. But prediction is not causation, and causal discovery is at the core of most questions concerning economic policy. Recently, however, the literature has focused more on issues of causality. This paper gently introduces some...

This paper briefly describes some features of the situation of the Spanish economy after five years of crisis, a task which is easier now that this period can be analyzed from a certain perspective. The crisis prompted a substantial readjustment of the main Spanish macroeconomic aggregates,...

Today the global economy is facing down the threat of a multifaceted crisis. Sustained by ultra-low interest rates and unprecedented levels of quantitative easing since the last global financial crisis, the global economy is taking a sharp turn toward tighter monetary policy as it experiences...

This paper aims to investigate the presence of a creditless economic recovery in Eastern Europe, after de 2008-2009 output collapse. To this end, we use three variables: credit stock, credit flow and money supply M1. We find that the changes in the credit flow, as percentage of GDP, are the most...

We examine the existence of a feedback loop between the resilience of the financial sector and Greek economic activity. A sequence of structural VARs is employed using data for bank credit, liquidity, capital, asset quality and private demand in 2001-2018 in two data sets. One in monthly...

This paper proposes a general statistical framework for systemic financial stress indices which measure the severity of financial crises on a continuous scale. Several index designs from the financial stress and systemic risk literature can be represented as special cases. We introduce an...

In this paper we review the empirical and theoretical literature on the effects of changes in the relationship between the financial sector and the non-financial sectors of the economy associated with 'financialisation' on distribution, growth, instability and crises. We take a macroeconomic...

The increasing dominance of finance starting in the late 1970s/early 1980s in the US and the UK, and somewhat later in other countries, was associated with two fundamental and structural processes generating the contradictions of this phase of development and finally the financial and economic...

Along time the European Union (EU) has been pointed as the most succeeded example of regional integration. Now, this example has been cruelly shaken by the EZ (Euro Zone) crisis, originating increasing doubts about the integration process. It is evident that the proposed solutions for attacking...

Intangible-intensive firms in the U.S. hold an enormous amount of liquid assets that are in fact short-term debts issued by financial intermediaries. This paper builds a macro-finance model that captures this structure. A self-perpetuating savings glut emerges in equilibrium. As intangibles...