European Economic Review, Vol. 19, Issue 6, pp. 881-897. The costs of wars have been the main driver of public debt in the Western World during the modern era. The late twentieth century stands out as a period that saw a pronounced increase of government debt to GDP ratios in peacetime. This paper assesses the […]

with Alan Taylor and Oscar Jorda — American Economic Review, Vol. 102, Issue 2, pp. 1029-61. We study the behavior of money, credit, and macroeconomic indicators over the long run based on a new historical dataset for 14 countries over the years 1870-2008. Total credit has increased strongly relative to output and money in the […]