I investigate the effects of the monetary rate, the interest rate set by the Central Bank, on bank risk taking by examining a sample of loan contracts secured by shares and extended by the North and South Wales Bank between 1881 and 1894. Collateralization by shares allows me to construct a measure of ex ante […]

with William F. Maloney — The Economic Journal, Vol. 126, Issue 598, pages 2363–2401. Using subnational historical data, this paper establishes the within country persistence of economic activity in the New World over the last half millennium, a period including the trauma of the European colonization, the decimation of the native populations, and the imposition […]

with Oscar Jordà and Alan M. Taylor — Journal of the European Economic Association, Vol. 14, Issue 1. This paper studies the co-evolution of public and private sector debt in advanced countries since 1870. We find that in advanced economies financial stability risks have come from private sector credit booms and not from the expansion […]

with Oscar Jordà and Alan M. Taylor —Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Vol. 45(s2), pp. 3-28 Using data on 14 advanced countries between 1870 and 2008 we document two key facts of the modern business cycle: relative to typical recessions, financial crisis recessions are costlier, and more credit-intensive expansions tend to be followed by […]

The Great Recession has focused renewed attention on the role of household leverage in the business cycle. Household debt overhang and the ensuing process of deleveraging are often cited as factors holding back economic recovery. This paper studies the relationship between household debt and economic performance during the Great Depression in the U.S. on the […]