Do credit contractions trigger social unrest? To answer this question, we turn to a natural experiment from 1930s China, where the 1933 U.S. Silver Purchase program acts as a shock to bank lending. We assemble a hand-collected dataset of loan contracts between banks and firms, labor unrest...

How far do China's property prices need to drop in order to send the country into a recession? What does this question tell us about the way Bubble Economies work? In this paper, we develop a theory of Bubble Economics - non-linear and often “systemic” (in the mathematical sense of the word)...

The present paper attempts to study the economic and financial crises of 15th century Egypt, which was ruled by Mamluk dynasty. Two social thinkers of the time – al-Maqrizi at the beginning of the century and al-Asadi at the middle – addressed the situation. To the former, deterioration of...

How far do China’s property prices need to drop in order to trigger a GDP reaction that looks like a price bubble bursting? What does this question tell us about the way Bubble Economies work? In this paper, argue for a separate analysis of ‘Bubble Economics’ – as the non-linear and...

This paper investigates the potential impacts of the degree of divergence in open macroeconomic policies in the context of the trilemma hypothesis. Using an index that measures the extent of policy divergence among the three trilemma policy choices—monetary independence, exchange rate...

This paper analyses several severe financial crises observed in the history of capitalism which led to a longer period of stagnation or low growth. Comparative case studies of the Great Depression, the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s and the Japanese crisis of the 1990s and 2000s are...

The first global financial bubble in stock prices occurred 1720 in Paris, London and the Netherlands. Explanations for these linked bubbles primarily focus on the irrationality of investor speculation and the corresponding stock price behavior of two large firms: the South Sea Company in Great...

The present paper attempts to study the economic and financial crises of 15th century Egypt, which was ruled by Mamluk dynasty. Two social thinkers of the time – al-Maqrizi at the beginning of the century and al-Asadi at the middle – addressed the situation. To the former, deterioration of...