In our recent paper, (Reinhart and Reinhart, 2010) we examine the behavior of real GDP (levels and growth rates), unemployment, inflation, bank credit, and real estate prices in a twenty one-year window surrounding selected adverse global and country-specific shocks or events. In this note, we...

We focus on four previous systemic financial crises that the United States has experienced since 1870. These include the crisis of 1873 (called the Great Depression until the 1930s), the 1893 crisis, the panic of 1907, and the Great Depression. Given that all of the earlier crises predate the...

The global scope and depth of the 2007-2009 crisis is unprecedented in the post World War II period. As such, the most relevant comparison benchmark is the Great Depression, or the Great Contraction as dubbed by Friedman and Schwartz (1963). We highlight some of the similarities between these...

Financial crises are historically associated with the “4 deadly D’s”: Sharp economic downturns follow banking crises; with government revenues dragged down, fiscal deficits worsen; deficits lead to debt; as debt piles up rating downgrades follow. For the most fortunate countries, the...

In this paper an alternative view of the relation between the wage level, wage dispersion, training incentives and employment is presented. We provide some theoretical arguments which cast doubt on the standard thesis that unemployment - especially in Germany - is mainly caused by labor market...

This paper investigates the effect of unemployment on house prices in the UK property market to give an indication of the nature of their relationship. By evaluating housing research, including unemployment variables, this paper gives an overview of the uses of the unemployment variable and show...

As by product of economic growth, jobs are indeed transformational. In other words, efficiency increases as workers get better at what they do (as more productive jobs appear and less productive one disappear). In fact societies flourish as jobs bring together people from different ethnic and...

The main objective of this study is to investigate the long run trade-off between unemployment and inflation in Egypt through the period (1974-2011) using Johansen-Juselius (1990) cointegration test and Vector Error Correction Model (VECM). Results of ADF test indicate that both series are...

This study examines the effects of fiscal austerity, among other socioeconomic variables, on suicide rates in Greece over the period 1968-2011. Our results suggest that fiscal austerity, higher unemployment rates, negative economic growth and reduced fertility rates, significantly increase...

The welfare state was created after 1950 with counterproductive mechanisms and this caused high inflation and high unemployment and stagnating growth by 1970, called stagflation. Since 1970 governments redressed the welfare state but did not succeed in finding workable mechanisms. They rather...