The global scope and depth of the 2007-2009 crisis is unprecedented in the post World War II period. As such, the most relevant comparison benchmark is the Great Depression, or the Great Contraction as dubbed by Friedman and Schwartz (1963). We highlight some of the similarities between these...

Financial crises are historically associated with the “4 deadly D’s”: Sharp economic downturns follow banking crises; with government revenues dragged down, fiscal deficits worsen; deficits lead to debt; as debt piles up rating downgrades follow. For the most fortunate countries, the...

In our recent paper, (Reinhart and Reinhart, 2010) we examine the behavior of real GDP (levels and growth rates), unemployment, inflation, bank credit, and real estate prices in a twenty one-year window surrounding selected adverse global and country-specific shocks or events. In this note, we...

We focus on four previous systemic financial crises that the United States has experienced since 1870. These include the crisis of 1873 (called the Great Depression until the 1930s), the 1893 crisis, the panic of 1907, and the Great Depression. Given that all of the earlier crises predate the...

Potential links between inflation, (t), and unemployment, UE(t), in Germany have been examined. There exists a consistent (conventional) Phillips curve despite some changes in monetary policy. This Phillips curve is characterized by a negative relation between inflation and unemployment with...

This paper analyzes how the frictions in the labor market simultaneously affect the economic growth and the long run unemployment. To this goal, we develop a Schumpeterian model of endogenous growth: agents have the choice of being employed or being doing R&D activities. Unemployment is caused...

The perception of job instability is an important measure of subjective well-being of individuals, because most people derive their income from selling their labour services. The study explores the determination of perception of job instability in Europe. The study is based on a large-scale...

In international circles, the concern of the day is the state of the world economy. There is a general appreciation of the severity of the problem, but no widespread agreement about either diagnosis or solutions. We shall focus here on a particular set of topics that have emerged as major issues...

This paper re-examines the empirical validity of the hysteresis hypothesis in unemployment rates in terms of education level in 17 OECD countries. To this end for unbalanced panel, we employ Pesaran’s Cross Sectional Dependence (CD) and Cross-Sectionally Augmented ADF (CADF) tests. Our...

This work is a PhD dissertation, written at the Department of Economics, McGill University. The thesis offers a new framework for inflation as a process of restructuring. Contrary to existing theories of inflation, which tend to take structure and institutions as given for the purpose of...