The empirical literature on systemic banking crises (SBCs) has shown that SBCs are rare events that break out in the midst of credit intensive booms and bring about particularly deep and long-lasting recessions. We attempt to explain these phenomena within a dynamic general equilibrium model...

We examine the evolution of the Icelandic banking sector in its macroeconomic environment. The story culminates in the crisis of October 2008, when all three major banks in Iceland collapsed in three successive days. The country is still struggling to cope with the consequences. The paper...

This paper analyses macroeconomic and financial determinants of bad loans applying a SVAR approach to investigate whether excessive loans granted during expansionary phases can explain the more than proportional increase in non-performing loans during contractionary periods. The results indicate...

Credit-to-GDP gaps are valuable early warning indicators for systemic banking crises. As such,they are useful for identifying vulnerabilities and can help guide the deployment of macroprudential tools such as the build-up of countercyclical capital buffers. In line with Basel III...

When the Great Depression struck the United States, O.M.W. Sprague was America's foremost expert on financial crises. His History of Crises under the National Banking System is a frequently cited classic. Had he diagnosed a banking panic and called for an aggressive response by the Federal...

We show that lender of the last resort (LOLR) policy contributes to higher bank interconnectedness and systemic risk. Using novel micro-level data, we analyze the haircut gap channel of LOLR – the difference between the private market and central bank haircuts. LOLR increases...

I propose a dynamic general equilibrium model in which strategic interactions between banks and depositors may lead to endogenous bank fragility and slow recovery from crises. When banks’investment decisions are not contractible, depositors form expectations about bank risk-taking and demand a...

Financial crises have large deleterious effects on economic activity, and as such have been the focus of a large body of research. This study surveys the existing literature on financial crises, exploring how crises are measured, whether they are predictable, and why they are associated with...

This paper studies the long-run evolution of bank risk and its links to the macroeconomy. Using data for 17 advanced economies, we show that the riskiness of bank assets declined materially between 1870 and 2016. But even though bank assets have become safer, the losses on these assets are...

This paper proposes a quantitative theory of the interaction between private and public debt in an open economy. Excessive private debt increases the frequency of financial crises. During such crises the government provides fiscal bailouts financed with risky public debt. This response may cause...