This paper summarizes and explains the main events of the liquidity and credit crunch in 2007-08. Starting with the trends leading up to the crisis, I explain how these events unfolded and how four different amplification mechanisms magnified losses in the mortgage market into large dislocations and turmoil in financial markets.

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Deciphering the Liquidity and Credit Crunch 2007-08

Using various methods, the size of the shadow economy in 76 developing, transition, and OECD countries is estimated. Average size varies from 12 percent of GDP for OECD countries, to 23 percent for transition countries and 39 percent for developing countries. Increasing taxation and social security contributions combined with rising state regulations are driving forces for the increase of the shadow economy, especially in OECD countries. According to some findings, corruption has a positive impact on the size of the shadow economy, and a growing shadow economy has a negative effect on official GDP growth.

/pdf/shadow-economies-size-causes-and-consequences-1rnohp2zuz.pdf

Shadow Economies: Size, Causes, and Consequences

The crisis of 2008-09 has focused attention on money and credit fluctuations, financial crises, and policy responses. In this paper we study the behavior of money, credit, and macroeconomic indicators over the long run based on a newly constructed historical dataset for 12 developed countries over the years 1870-2008, utilizing the data to study rare events associated with financial crisis episodes. We present new evidence that leverage in the financial sector has increased strongly in the second half of the twentieth century as shown by a decoupling of money and credit aggregates, and we also find a decline in safe assets on banks' balance sheets. We also show for the first time how monetary policy responses to financial crises have been more aggressive post-1945, but how despite these policies the output costs of crises have remained large. Importantly, we can also show that credit growth is a powerful predictor of financial crises, suggesting that such crises are

Credit Booms Gone Bust: Monetary Policy, Leverage Cycles and Financial Crises, 1870-2008

Over the last thirty years, a new paradigm in banking theory has overturned economists' traditional vision of the banking sector. The asymmetric information model, extremely powerful in many areas of economic theory, has proven useful in banking theory both for explaining the role of banks in the economy and for pointing out structural weaknesses in the banking sector that may justify government intervention. In the past, banking courses in most doctoral programs in economics, business, or finance focused either on management or monetary issues and their macroeconomic consequences; a microeconomic theory of banking did not exist because the Arrow-Debreu general equilibrium model of complete contingent markets (the standard reference at the time) was unable to explain the role of banks in the economy. This text provides students with a guide to the microeconomic theory of banking that has emerged since then, examining the main issues and offering the necessary tools for understanding how they have been modeled. This second edition covers the recent dramatic developments in academic research on the microeconomics of banking, with a focus on four important topics: the theory of two-sided markets and its implications for the payment card industry; "non-price competition" and its effect on the competition-stability tradeoff and the entry of new banks; the transmission of monetary policy and the effect on the functioning of the credit market of capital requirements for banks; and the theoretical foundations of banking regulation, which have been clarified, although recent developments in risk modeling have not yet led to a significant parallel development of economic modeling. Praise for the first edition:"The book is a major contribution to the literature on the theory of bankingand intermediation. It brings together and synthesizes a broad range ofmaterial in an accessible way. I recommend it to all serious scholars andstudents of the subject. The authors are to be congratulated on a superbachievement." -- Franklin Allen, Nippon Life Professor of Finance and Economics, WhartonSchool, University of Pennsylvania "This book provides the first comprehensive treatment of the microeconomicsof banking. It gives an impressive synthesis of an enormous body ofresearch developed over the last twenty years. It is clearly written and apleasure to read. What I found particularly useful is the great effort thatXavier Freixas and Jean-Charles Rochet have taken to systematicallyintegrate the theory of financial intermediation into classicalmicroeconomics and finance theory. This book is likely to become essentialreading for all graduate students in economics, business, and finance." -- Patrick Bolton, Barbara and David Zalaznick Professor of Business, Columbia University Graduate School of Business "The authors have provided an extremely thorough and up-to-date survey ofmicroeconomic theories of financial intermediation. This work manages to beboth rigorous and pleasant to read. Such a book was long overdue and shouldbe required reading for anybody interested in the economics of banking andfinance." -- Mathias Dewatripont, Professor of Economics, ECARES, Universit

Microeconomics of banking

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/39681/wp297.pdf?sequence=3

Corporate Governance in the Asian Financial Crisis

Make FDIC Insurance Redundant

Deposit insurance, bank resolution, and lender of last resort : Putting the pieces together

The relative impact of money and income on interest rates: an empirical investigation

Losses may accrue to depositors at insolvent banks both at and after the time of official resolution. Losses at resolution occur because of poor closure rules and regulatory forbearance. Losses after resolution occur if depositors' access to their claims is delayed or "frozen." While the sources and implications of losses at resolution have been analyzed previously, the sources and implications of losses after resolution have received little attention. This paper examines the causes of delayed depositors' access to their funds at resolved banks, describes how the FDIC provides immediate access, reports on a special survey of access practices in other countries, and analyzes the costs and benefits of delayed access in terms of both the effects on market discipline and depositor pressure to protect all deposits.

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Post-Resolution Treatment of Depositors At Failed Banks : Implications for the Severity of Banking Crises, Systemic Risk, and too-Big-To-Fail

Like any course, the basic money and financial institutions course, or money and banking as it is more frequently designated, takes on the unique coloration of the instructor. However, this course appears to be so affected more than most other finance and economics courses at this level. This occurs because, although it is a second course, it is still a very broad course in design, and more importantly, because it encompasses the three approaches to the teaching of economics and finance–description, theory, and policy. Different instructors emphasize different aspects, at times, to the almost total exclusion of one or both of the other two. But, judging from the financial failure of textbooks that have attempted to focus on just one of these aspects, say, financial institutions or monetary economics, it appears that most instructors prefer the broader and more diffuse coverage. And so do I.

George G. Kaufman

Papers

Make FDIC Insurance Redundant

Deposit insurance, bank resolution, and lender of last resort : Putting the pieces together

The relative impact of money and income on interest rates: an empirical investigation

Post-Resolution Treatment of Depositors At Failed Banks : Implications for the Severity of Banking Crises, Systemic Risk, and too-Big-To-Fail

Teaching of the Basic Money and Financial Institutions Course