The financial crisis and subsequent economic recession led to a rapid increase in the issuance of public debt. But large-scale purchases of bonds by the Federal Reserve, and other major central banks, have significantly reduced the scale and maturity of public debt that would otherwise have been...

Over the last two decades the United Kingdom has experienced a dramatic increase in the amount of household debt and in the level of house prices. The question which interests us is the extent to which these developments can be explained through structural changes to the UK economy. These...

We construct a measure of the short-term world interest rate using principal component analysis. Drawing on real interest rate data for 18 OECD countries for the period 1985-2008, persistent deviations from the world interest rate that cannot be explained by movements in the real exchange rate...

At moderate levels, debt improves welfare and enhances growth. But high levels can be damaging. When does debt go from good to bad? We address this question using a new dataset that includes the level of government, non-financial corporate and household debt in 18 OECD countries from 1980 to...