The U.S. during the 1984-2007 Great Moderation saw unusual macroeconomic stability combined with strong growth in asset prices and in credit relative to output. The distribution of credit shifted towards the financial and real estate sectors. The literature shows that each of these trends...

During the Great Moderation, borrowing by the U.S. nonfinancial sector structurally exceeded GDP growth. Using flow-of-fund data, we test the hypothesis that this measure of debt buildup was leading to lower output volatility. We estimate univariate GARCH models in order to obtain estimates for...

During the Great Moderation, financial innovation in the U.S. increased the size and scope of credit flows supporting the growth of wealth. We hypothesize that spending out of wealth came to finance a wider range of GDP components such that it smoothed GDP. Both these trends combined would be...

Financial innovation during the Great Moderation increased the size and scope of credit flows in the US. Credit flows increased both in volume and with regard to the range of activities and investments that was debt-financed. This may have contributed to the reduction in output volatility that...

This paper addresses issues relevant to a critical problem in economic development: how to get rapid pro-poor economic growth in poor rural areas in Africa and South Asia where most of the world’s dollar a day poor live. It examines constraints to the development of coordinated exchange...

Long-term growth in developing countries has been explained in four frameworks: ‘extractive colonial institutions’ (Acemoglu et al., 2001), ‘colonial legal origin’ (La Porta et al., 2004) ‘geography’ (Gallup et al., 1998) and ‘colonial human capital’ (Glaeser et al., 2004). In...