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 […]

German Economic Review, Vol. 15, Issue 1, pp. 191–207. In this study, I draw on recent comparative studies of the macroeconomic history of advanced economies since 1870. I show that while both public and private debts have increased markedly, private, not public debts have climbed to historically unprecedented levels. Outside war times, financial crises have […]

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 […]

with Fabio Braggion and Lyndon Moore. We study the effects of bank mergers and acquisitions in the U.K from 1885 to 1925. The lack of a regulatory authority and the confidential nature of merger negotiations allows us to precisely measure the wealth effects of M&As in a laissez-faire environment. We find positive wealth effects for […]

in: Hubert Bonin, Niels-Viggo Haueter, Alfredo Gigliobianco, and Harold James (ed.) Public Policies and the Direction of Financial Flows, Bucharest 2012 This paper tracks the history of government intervention in the U.S. mortgage market between 1932 and the 1960s, a period in which the system for housing finance underwent a fundamental transformation. Whereas prior to […]