This paper studies the role of credit in the business cycle, with a focus on private credit overhang. Based on a study of the universe of over 200 recession episodes in 14 advanced countries between 1870 and 2008, we document two key facts of the modern business cycle: financial-crisis...

In the first era of financial globalization (1880-1914), global capital market integration led to substantial net capital movements from rich to poor economies. The historical experience stands in contrast to the contemporary globalization where gross capital mobility is equally high, but did...

In the first era of financial globalization (1880-1914), global capital market integration led to substantial net capital movements from rich to poor economies. The historical experience stands in contrast to the contemporary globalization where gross capital mobility is equally high, but did...

The ongoing financial crisis is shaking central bankers' certainties about their mission, and a rethinking of such mission can greatly benefit from a non-finalistic reassessment of how central banking has evolved over the centuries. This paper does so by taking a functional, instead of an...

Just as the 1929 Stock Market Crash discredited Classical economic theory and policy and opened the way for Keynesianism, a consequence of the collapse of confidence in financial markets and the banking system - and the effect that this has had on the global macro economy - is currently...

‘Global financial crisis' is an inaccurate description of the current upheaval in the world's financial markets. The initial banking crisis did not affect all countries to the same degree. Notably, while the US and UK banking systems were badly hit, those of the other two major Anglo-Saxon...

The return to economic liberalism in the Anglo-Saxon world was motivated by the apparent failure of Keynesian economic management to control the stagflation of the 1970s and early 1980s. In this context, the theories of economic liberalism, championed by Friederich von Hayek, Milton Friedman and...

By tracing the history of the links of financialization to consumer behaviors and marketer actions in the 20th century, this paper aims to show that consumer market phenomena are often shaped by the imperatives of finance. The paper employs selective historical overviews, mainly focusing on the...

The very phrase "League of Nations" is a metaphor for international organizational failure. In the wake of the war it was designated to prevent, the League became the example to be avoided in building new multilateral institutions. Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that our textbooks on...

Economic growth generally follows a cyclical order. It will go up for some time and again come down for some period. Following this pattern United States grew by 0.6 percent in the last quarter of 2007, down from 4.9 percent in the previous quarter. But this downturn has some other aspects. With...