Can central banks defuse rising stability risks in financial booms by leaning against the wind with higher interest rates? This paper studies the state-dependent effects of monetary policy on financial crisis risk. Based on the near-universe of advanced economy financial cycles since the 19th century, we show that discretionary leaning against the wind policies during […]

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Germany is world champion in exporting capital (“Exportweltmeister”). No other country invests larger amounts of savings outside its borders. However, Germany plays in the third division when it comes to investment performance, as we show in this paper. We study the returns on German foreign investments from 1950 to 2017 and find that: (1) Germany’s […]

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This paper studies the synchronization of financial cycles across 17 advanced economies over the past 150 years. The comovement in credit, house prices, and equity prices has reached historical highs in the past three decades. The sharp increase in the comovement of global equity markets is particularly notable. We demonstrate that fluctuations in risk premiums, […]

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The risk premium puzzle is worse than you think. Using a new database for the U.S. and 15 other advancedeconomies from 1870 to the present that includes housing as well as equity returns (to capture thefull risky capital portfolio of the representative agent), standard calculations using returns to total wealthand consumption show that: housing returns […]

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Central banks increasingly rely on macroprudential measures to manage the financial cycle. However, the effects of such policies on the core objectives of monetary policy to stabilise output and inflation are largely unknown. In this paper we quantify the effects of changes in maximum loan-to-value (LTV) ratios on output and inflation. We rely on a […]

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This paper presents annual stock market capitalization data for 17 advanced economies from 1870 to today. Extending our knowledge beyond individual benchmark years in the seminal work of Rajan and Zingales (2003) reveals a striking new time series pattern: over the long run, the evolution of stock market size resembles a hockey stick. The stock […]

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This paper introduces a new long-run dataset based on archival data from historical waves of the Survey of Consumer Finances. The household-level data allow us to study the joint distributions of household income and wealth since 1949. We expose the central importance of portfolio composition and asset prices for wealth dynamics in postwar America. Asset […]

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