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....

Based largely on industry-level aggregate statistics, the prevailing view, and one that has strongly influenced macroeconomic thought, is that real wages during the cycle containing the Great Depression are either acyclical or countercyclical. Does this finding hold-up when more micro data are...

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...

In this paper I survey and reinterpret the extensive literature on Europe's Great Depression. I argue that Europe could not exploit her vast economic potential after 1918, because the war had not yet come to an end - indeed it did not end before 1945. Both, domestic and international...

This paper reconsiders the role of monetary policy in Sweden's strong recovery from the Great Depression. The Riksbank in the 1930s is sometimes seen as an example of a central bank that was relatively innovative in terms of the conduct of monetary policy. To consider this analytically, we...

This paper reconsiders the role of monetary policy in Sweden's strong recovery from the Great Depression. The Riksbank in the 1930s is sometimes seen as an example of a central bank that was relatively innovative in terms of the conduct of monetary policy. To consider this analytically, we...

This paper investigates the impact of the history of crises on macroeconomic performance. We first study the impact of past banking crises on the probability of a future banking crisis. Applying data for 1980 - 2010 for all countries for which the required information is available, controlling...

The paper analyzes the stylized features of historical crisis episodes for 21 developing Asian economies over 1961–2007. The paper finds that while there is substantial diversity, on average, recessions and financial downturns are more frequent, longer lasting, and more severe in Asia than in...