Sudden stops are when capital inflows dry up abruptly. The banker’s aphorism—'It’s not speed that kills but the sudden stop'— has been popularly invoked since at least the Mexican crisis in 1994. Awareness then rose with impetus from the Argentine crisis (1995) the Asian crisis (1997) the Russian ...

My Economics Department colleagues are fond of telling me that as an economic historian I have the advantage that I don’t have to update my lectures in response to events. My history lectures don’t become outdated as quickly as their lectures on say the Great Moderation. The fallacy of this view is ...