The phenomenon of the global imbalances is one of the causes of the current financial and economic crisis. The financial flows associated to these imbalances are in the origin of the generalized crisis in the international financial markets, which are incapable to absorb efficiently these huge...

We address the issue of whether financial structure influences economic growth. Three competing views of financial structure exist in the literature: the bank-based, the market-based and the financial services view. Recent empirical studies examine their relevance by utilizing panel and...

Equity prices have been falling since March 2000. How far can they fall before they reach bottom? The current bear market differs from the mid-1970s plunge in equity prices in terms of the causes and, consequently, the factors that should be monitored to test its progress. In the 1970s, the bear...

Introduction

The paper analyses the mistakes made in the management of the fiscal policy in Spain before the crisis. The authors argue that the low size of the public expenditures, the adoption of a procyclical expansionary fiscal policy the years before the crisis, and the lack of a correct coordination...

Opposite to mainstream economics, (post-) Keynesian economics has defended the need of a discretionary fiscal policy that helps to maintain economic activity at a full employment level, offsetting the cyclical deviations from that level of output. In this sense, it is implicitly assumed that any...

The objective of this report is to provide a general overview of the process of transformation and development of the financial system in Spain that has taken place since the decade of the seventies in the past century. The report shows the main distinctive features of the financialisation...