Many commentators have argued that if the Federal Reserve had followed a stricter monetary policy earlier this decade when the housing bubble was forming, and if Congress had not deregulated banking but had imposed tighter financial standards, the housing boom and bust - and the subsequent...

Research has suggested that a rapid pace of nonfinancial borrowing reliably precedes financial crises, placing the pace of debt growth at the center of frameworks for the deployment of macroprudential policies. I reconsider the role of asset-prices and current account deficits as leading...

This paper assesses the role of financial variables in real economic fluctuations, in view of analysing the link between financial cycles and business cycles at the global level. A Global VAR modelling approach, which has been proved suitable for modelling country or regional linkages, is used...

The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (i.e. Basel I, II & III), the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank (i.e. Financial Sector Assessment Program), the World Trade Organization, the Bank for International Settlements, the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the...

The United States has turned into an anarchic Hobbesian in part triggered by; weakening dollar's natural pull as the main reserve currency; China's massive foreign reserves; fast rise of the renminbi; the failure attempts to dismantle gold and its readiness to reclaim a monetary role at the...

This paper assesses the role of financial variables in real economic fluctuations, in view of analysing the link between financial cycles and business cycles at the global level. A Global VAR modelling approach is used to first assess the contribution of credit and asset price variables to real...

This paper asks if bonanzas (i.e. surges) in net capital flows are associated with a higher likelihood of banking crises and whether this association is necessarily through a lending boom mechanism. Using a new database covering over one hundred countries during 1973-2008, the paper shows that...

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 Great Financial Crisis of 2007-09 confirmed the vital importance of advancing our understanding of macrofinancial linkages, the two-way interactions between the real economy and the financial sector. The crisis was a bitter reminder of how sharp fluctuations in asset prices, credit and...

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...