The horror show continues...statistics on industrial and output production are horrible (with Japan recording a particularly impressive slump of GDP by 12.7% in the last quarter), stock markets got off to the worst start to the year in recorded history (the S+P-500 just did, as of today), and unemployment is surging almost everywhere. With this as background, I no longer really need to put up one of my all-time favourite charts (from Brad Delong) to motivate why it might be interesting to look at financial crises. I revamped my course on Bubbles, Crashes, and Crises for the 2008-09 edition of the ITFD master. You can have a peek here. I included the latest overview paper by Reinhart and Rogoff, and a module on subprime. Together with the interesting work that Lorenzoni, Matsuyama and others have been doing on how credit booms can lead to inefficient investment, I think there should be plenty here to speak to the context and background of the current crisis.
Monday, 23 February 2009
Financial Crisis Course
The horror show continues...statistics on industrial and output production are horrible (with Japan recording a particularly impressive slump of GDP by 12.7% in the last quarter), stock markets got off to the worst start to the year in recorded history (the S+P-500 just did, as of today), and unemployment is surging almost everywhere. With this as background, I no longer really need to put up one of my all-time favourite charts (from Brad Delong) to motivate why it might be interesting to look at financial crises. I revamped my course on Bubbles, Crashes, and Crises for the 2008-09 edition of the ITFD master. You can have a peek here. I included the latest overview paper by Reinhart and Rogoff, and a module on subprime. Together with the interesting work that Lorenzoni, Matsuyama and others have been doing on how credit booms can lead to inefficient investment, I think there should be plenty here to speak to the context and background of the current crisis.
