RESEARCH AREAS

Financialization–History, Economics, Politics

The widely held belief that financial deepening benefits the economy by efficiently allocating capital and diversifying risk was shaken to its core by the breadth and scope of the 2008/09 financial crisis. This research project combines 140 years of economic history with state-of-the-art econometric methods to gain new insights into the relationship between finance, growth and crises.

Housing Markets in History

For economists there is no price like home—at least not since the global financial crisis. Fluctuations in house prices and their importance for the macroeconomy have become a rapidly expanding research field. The economic history of advanced economies is spattered with narratives about booms and busts in real estate prices. Yet we know surprisingly little about long-run trends and cycles in house prices. This research project aims to fill this void.

Long-term Economic Persistence

Simply put, economic persistence examines the historical factors that affect economic performance today. As such, it combines insights from economic development, history and growth. Ultimately, it is a quest for the deep-rooted geographic, institutional, educational, genetic and cultural determinants of comparative economic development. This research project will emphasize the long-lasting legacy of colonialism with a special focus on Latin America.

Size of Finance

In the years prior to the recent financial crisis, wages and value added of the financial sector skyrocketed relative to the rest of the economy. This research project aims to provide new insights into the growth and change of the financial sector and to advance our understanding of common trends and differences across countries in its historical evolution. As a central part of the project, we construct a dataset to measure the contribution of the financial sector to GDP in advanced economies since 1870.

NEW RESEARCH

with Carl-Ludwig Holtfrerich, Lars P. Feld, Werner Heun, Gerhard Illing, Gebhard Kirchgässner, Jürgen Kocka, Wolfgang Streeck, Uwe Wagschal, Stefanie Walter, Carl Christian von Weizsäcker. Seit der schweren Finanz- und Wirtschaftskrise 2007/2008, der Verankerung der Schuldenbremse im Grundgesetz der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 2009 und der Schuldenkrise einiger Eurostaaten seit 2010 wird das schon lange virulente Streitthema „Staatsschulden“ […]

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Betting the House

with Oscar Jordà and Alan M. Taylor — Journal of Economic Perspectives (forthcoming). Is there a link between loose monetary conditions, credit growth, house price booms, and financial instability? This paper analyzes the role of interest rates and credit in driving house price booms and busts with data spanning 140 years of modern economic history […]

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This article examines the long-term consequences of a historical human capital intervention. The Jesuit order founded religious missions amongst the Guarani, in modern-day Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay. Missionaries instructed indigenous inhabitants in reading, writing and various crafts, before their expulsion in 1767. Using archival records and municipal census data, I demonstrate that educational attainment was […]

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Journal of Applied Econometrics, March 2017, Volume 32, Issue 2. To improve the detection of the economic ”danger zones” from which severe banking crises emanate, this paper introduces classification tree ensembles to the banking crisis forecasting literature. I show that their out-of-sample performance in forecasting binary banking crisis indicators surpasses current best-practice early warning systems […]

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