We study economic growth and inflation at different levels of government and external debt. Our analysis is based on new data on forty-four countries spanning about two hundred years. The dataset incorporates over 3,700 annual observations covering a wide range of political systems,...

This paper examines the depth and duration of the slump that invariably follows severe financial crises, which tend to be protracted affairs. We find that asset market collapses are deep and prolonged. On a peak-to-trough basis, real housing price declines average 35 percent stretched out over...

Banking crises dramatically weaken fiscal positions in both groups, with government revenues invariably contracting, and fiscal expenditures often expanding sharply. Three years after a financial crisis central government debt increases, on average, by about 86 percent. Thus the fiscal burden of...

There is a rich scholarly literature on sovereign default on external debt. Comparatively little is known about sovereign defaults on domestic debt. Even today, cross-country data on domestic public debt remains curiously exotic, particularly prior to the 1980s. We have filled this gap in the...

This paper offers a "panoramic" analysis of the history of financial crises dating from England's fourteenth-century default to the current United States sub-prime financial crisis. Our study is based on a new dataset that spans all regions. It incorporates a number of important credit episodes...

This paper offers a quot;panoramicquot; analysis of the history of financial crises dating from England's fourteenth-century default to the current United States sub-prime financial crisis. Our study is based on a new dataset that spans all regions. It incorporates a number of important credit...

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- LIST OF TABLES -- LIST OF FIGURES -- LIST OF BOXES -- PREFACE -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- PREAMBLE: SOME INITIAL INTUITIONS ON FINANCIAL FRAGILITY AND THE FICKLE NATURE OF CONFIDENCE -- PART I. Financial Crises: An Operational Primer -- PART II. Sovereign External Debt...

This paper studies external sovereign bonds as an asset class. It compiles a new database of 266,000 monthly prices of foreign-currency government bonds traded in London and New York between 1815 (the Battle of Waterloo) and 2016, covering up to 91 countries. The main insight is that, as in...

This Chartbook provides a pictorial history, on a country-by-country basis, of public debt and economic crises of various forms. It is a timeline of a country's creditworthiness and financial turmoil. The analysis, narrative, and illustrations in Reinhart and Rogoff (2009), This Time is...

Newly developed long historical time series on public debt, along with modern data on external debts, allow a deeper analysis of the cycles underlying serial debt and banking crises. The evidence confirms a strong link between banking crises and sovereign default across the economic history of...