This research explores two aspects of European insurers' investment behaviour related to crises. While they are often considered as financial market stabilisers and long-term investors, there is currently a lack of knowledge about insurers' investment behaviour in crises under the regulatory...

We evaluate the role played by loan supply shocks in the decline of investment and industrial production during the Great Depression in Germany from 1927 to 1932. We identify loan supply shocks in the context of a time varying parameter vector autoregression with stochastic volatility. Our...

We evaluate the role played by loan supply shocks in the decline of investment and industrial production during the Great Depression in Germany from 1927 to 1932. We identify loan supply shocks in the context of a time varying parameter vector autoregression with stochastic volatility. Our...

The severity of the Great Depression in Germany has sometimes been blamed on reparations in simplistic fashion. Alternative interpretations relied on American capital exports, the demise of the Gold Standard, or on malfunctions of the domestic economy, such as excessive wage increases during the...

Nearly eighty years ago, the Great Depression had a powerful impact not only on the world economy, but also on the social and political structures at international level by establishing new economic rules and relations, novel ideologies, and a different line of thinking. In Romania, the crisis...

The extreme levels of stock price volatility found during the Great Depression have often been attributed to political uncertainty. This Paper performs an explicit test of the Merton/Schwert hypothesis that doubts about the survival of the capitalist system were partly responsible. It does so by...

The German currency was controlled and German banks closed in July 1931. Does it matter whether poor currency management or poor banking practice led to the crisis? This paper argues that it does—because the choice indicates which decisions led to the Great Depression. This issue is so...

Was the German slump inevitable? This paper argues that -despite the speed and depth of Germany's deflation in the early 1930s - fear of inflation is evident in the bond, foreign exchange, and commodity markets at certain critical junctures of the Great Depression. Therefore, policy options were...

Detailed macroeconomic data to accompany the article in the Review of Economic Dynamics

In Italy, as in many other countries, the years immediately after 1929 were characterized by a major slowdown in economic activity. We argue that the depth and duration of the crisis cannot be explained solely by productivity shocks. We present a model in which trade restrictions together with...