Academic scholarship in light of the 2008 financial crisis: Textual analysis of NBER Working Papers

Textual analysis of the NBER Working Papers published during 1999-2016 is done to assess the effects of the 2007-2009 crisis on the academic literature. The volume of crisis-related WPs is counter-cyclical, lagging the financial-instability-index. WPs by the Monetary-Economics, Asset-Pricing, and Corporate-Finance program members, hardly refer to "crisis/crises" in the pre-crisis period. As the crisis develops, however, their study-efforts of crisis-related issues increase rapidly, focusing on the links between 'Repo-and-Securitization' and the crisis. In contrast, WPs in macroeconomics-related programs refer extensively to "crisis/crises" in the pre-crisis period. These WPs abandon topics of 'Sudden-Stop' and 'Emerging-Markets' as the crisis developed.