This chapter argues that, since the 1980s, moral hazard has encouraged excessive indebtedness and contributed to greater leniency from regulators and financial gatekeepers towards systemic banks. Examining the rise of the “too big to fail” (TBTF) banking behemoths, we question how moral...

The first monetary theory of the Great Depression is often credited to Milton Friedman. Advanced to counter the idea that the Great Depression resulted from inherent capitalistic instabilities, Friedman's theory attributed the Depression to policy mistakes by an inept Federal Reserve Board. More...

This chapter compares alternative explanations of the Great Depression: the Monetarist explanation of (Friedman and Schwartz,.A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960, Princeton University Press, 1963), the Austrian explanation of Hayek and (Robbins,.The Great Depression, Macmillan,...