Special Topic

Description

The world witnessed a major financial crisis and a subsequent deep recession from 2007-2009. The recovery from this recession has been slow. Europe has been suffering a debt crisis starting in 2010 and China is struggling to avoid a financial meltdown. Is this a new problem? No! The world has been in this position many times in the past. Indeed financial crises can be traced back to early modern times and beyond. This course will focus on the issue of financial crises from an historical perspective and will introduce participants to the current debate surrounding the best policy response to the recent global financial crisis. It will survey the history of banking, currency and debt crises across the world for the past century and a half, but focus primarily on the experience of the US and UK. It will end with a discussion of the 2008 crisis in the US, the Eurozone crisis 2010-2013 and the current policy debates stemming from these crises.
The course will also examine the empirical evidence on crisis incidence, crisis severity and international crisis transmission. Finally the course considers the issue of policy in dealing with crises, with focus on the lender of last resort.