This paper analyzes the causes and implications of recent financial crises. Financial crises in general lead to changes in both theory and practice of economics. The paper takes an historical overview. The global consensus of economic theory during the 20th century is discussed. The paper...

The IMF began to play a prominent role in low-income countries in the late 1970s and 1980s when many countries faced overvalued exchange rates, growing budget deficits, high inflation, and low reserves. But times have changed, and many low-income countries no longer face these problems and do...

Most economies experience episodes of persistent real exchange rate appreciations, when the question arises whether there is a need for intervention to protect the export sector. In this paper we present a model of irreversible destruction where exchange rate intervention may be justified if the...

Three of the most important recent facts in global macroeconomics - the sustained rise in the US current account deficit, the stubborn decline in long run real rates, and the rise in the share of US assets in global portfolio - appear as anomalies from the perspective of conventional wisdom and...

The United States (US) extracts a large macroeconomic premium from foreigners: she enjoys higher consumption and GDP growths on average relative to the rest of the world (ROW). This is earned even though the US is relatively insulated against global consumption and GDP risks, challenging a...

Reliance on established macroeconomic thinking is not of much use in trying to understand what to do in response to the constellation of forces driving up inflation in these times of COVID-19 and war. This paper attempts to reduce the heat and turn up the light in the debate on the return of...

We show that an increase in banks' holdings of domestic Sovereign debt decreases the ability of domestic Sovereigns to successfully enact bailouts. When Sovereigns finance bailouts with newly issued debt and the price of Sovereign debt is sensitive to unanticipated debt issues, then bailouts...

This paper shows that an increase in banks' holdings of domestic sovereign debt decreases the ability of domestic sovereigns to successfully enact bailouts. When sovereigns finance bailouts with newly issued debt and the price of sovereign debt is sensitive to unanticipated debt issues, then...

Purpose – In a meta-study, we have bridged the gap between the pros and cons of a questionable finance-growth nexus.Design/methodology/approach – Over 20 fundamental characteristics that have influenced the debate over the last decades have been examined. The empirical evidence is based on...

We construct representative firm-level longitudinal data for twenty-seven European countries using financial statements from the Orbis global database, providing a “how-to” guide on the construction. We validate our dataset by comparing its aggregate coverage to official statis- tics and...