This paper compares the depth of the recent crisis and the Great Depression. We use a new data set, namely seven activity indicators, to compare the drop in activity in industrialised countries. This is done under the assumption that the recent crisis levelled off in mid-2009 for production and...

This paper compares the depth and length of the recent crisis with the Great Depression in the 1930s. It claims that economic policy played a crucial role in shortening and curtailing the recent crisis. We analyse which policies were applied during the recent crisis and which measures worked. We...

During the ongoing financial crisis the analysis of similar historical crises has gained more and more attention among economic researchers and forecasters. Existing studies, however, do not tackle the immense heterogeneity that is present in cross-country samples in a formal and consistent way....