By the mid-2000s both academics and central banks had come to a remarkable consensus on what central banks’ basic strategy should be. However with the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 the world of central banking changed forever. The worldwide financial crisis revealed that some of the ...

On September 2008 Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy and the world became aware that the financial crisis that had been unfolding for months was far more serious than expected. Months later it became clear that the financial crisis of 2008-2009 was the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression ...

Events in financial markets before and during the crisis of late 2008 have stimulated renewed interest in modeling trade with asymmetric information. Robert Shimer’s contribution to this volume joins the literature focusing on trade in securities that are claims on mortgages where issuers of the ...

A characteristic of the current crisis in Europe is that countries in its periphery have found themselves increasingly cut off from international financial markets. In the present study we ask how such changes in the financial structure influence the welfare consequences of maintaining a fixed exchange ...

At least since the time of Irving Fisher economists as well as the general public have regarded the interest rate as the most important variable in the economy. But in times of crisis collateral rates (margins or leverage equivalently) are far more important. Despite the cries of newspapers to lower ...

The Global Financial Crisis put to the fore the challenges of managing liquidity and foreign assets at times of heightened volatility. Earlier concerns of some observers regarding the costs of precautionary hoarding notwithstanding the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) validated the buffer value of ...

The 'Great Contraction' in global economic activity triggered by the financial crisis and the extraordinary fiscal and monetary measures that public authorities had to undertake in order to put the economy back on track by putting public finances under heavy strains and leading to extremely low ...

The slow rate of employment growth relative to that of output is a sticking point in the recovery from the financial crisis episode that started in 2008 in the U.S. and Europe (a phenomenon labeled 'jobless recovery'). The issue is a particularly burning one in Europe where some observers claim that ...

A novel element in the policy mix that responded to the 2008- 2009 financial crisis was the explicit role given to BancoEstado a publicly-owned commercial bank to alleviate the contraction in domestic credit provided by the banking sector. In order to aid its mission BancoEstado was capitalized by 500 ...

The global financial crisis that started in 2008 dramatically changed the analysis and implementation of monetary policy worldwide. Central banks were at the center of the stage during that time implementing both conventional and unconventional policies. Not only were monetary policy rates drastically ...