Is there a link between loose monetary conditions, credit growth, house price booms, and financial instability? This paper analyzes the role of interest rates and credit in driving house price booms and busts with data spanning 140 years of modern economic history in the advanced economies. We...

This paper unveils a new resource for macroeconomic research: a long-run dataset covering disaggregated bank credit for 17 advanced economies since 1870. The new data show that the share of mortgages on banks’ balance sheets doubled in the course of the 20th century, driven by a sharp rise of...

Using an extensive new data set on corporate bond defaults in the U.S. from 1866 to 2010, we study the macroeconomic effects of bond market crises and contrast them with those resulting from banking crises. During the past 150 years, the U.S. has experienced many severe corporate default crises...

The recent financial crisis has generated many distinct perspectives from various quarters. In this article, I review a diverse set of twenty-one books on the crisis, eleven written by academics, and ten written by journalists and one former Treasury Secretary. No single narrative emerges from...

The financial crisis of 2007 to 2009 can be divided into two distinct phases. The first and more limited phase from August 2007 to August 2008 stemmed from losses in one relatively small segment of the U.S. financial system—namely, subprime residential mortgages. Despite this disruption to...

This paper unveils a new resource for macroeconomic research: a long-run dataset covering disaggregated bank credit for 17 advanced economies since 1870. The new data show that the share of mortgages on banks' balance sheets doubled in the course of the 20th century, driven by a sharp rise of...

We analyze whether mid-level managers in securitized finance were aware of a large-scale housing bubble and a looming crisis in 2004-2006 using their personal home transaction data. We find that the average person in our sample neither timed the market nor were cautious in their home...

W artykule potraktowano sektor finansowy jako istotny czynnik napędowy fluktuacji koniunkturalnych. Powszechnie przyjęte wyjaśnienie procykliczności systemu finansowego wyrasta z asymetrii informacji między pożyczkobiorcami i pożyczkodawcami. Minsky zaproponował teorię wiążącą...

This paper unveils a new resource for macroeconomic research: a long-run dataset covering disaggregated bank credit for 17 advanced economies since 1870. The new data show that the share of mortgages on banks' balance sheets doubled in the course of the 20th century, driven by a sharp rise of...

This paper unveils a new resource for macroeconomic research: a long-run dataset covering disaggregated bank credit for 17 advanced economies since 1870. The new data show that the share of mortgages on banks’ balance sheets doubled in the course of the 20th century, driven by a sharp rise of...