November 2024 - Working Paper33202 We present new long-run samples of r-g series over centuries for key economies in the international financial system. Across a wide variety of econometric approaches, and including duration-matched constructions, we demonstrate strong evidence of trend stationarity in these series. Although we...
November 2024 - Working Paper33201 Digitalization led to a rapid expansion of loyalty tokens typically bundled as part of product price. An open question is whether issuers are incentivized to make loyalty tokens tradable, raising regulation issues for monetary and banking authorities. This paper argues that an issuer earns more...
October 2024 - Working Paper33079 Utilizing critical recent data advances, we analyze empirical evidence on long-run samples of short-maturity real interest rates as well as term spreads based on multi-century data. In contrast to an extensive literature on short-maturity real interest rates over the past few decades, we find strong...
April 2024 - Working Paper32308 We present a simple long-run aggregate demand and supply framework for evaluating long-run inflation. The framework illustrates how exogenous economic and political economy factors generate central bank pressures that can impact long-run inflation as well as transitions between steady states. We use...
March 1, 2024 - Article
Novelist Victor Hugo offered insightful analysis of the underground economy in his 1862 novel Les Misrables : when work is lacking, when the trade is nil, the taxpayer resists the tax by shortage, exhausts and exceeds the deadlines, and the State spends a lot of money in duress and enforcement fees....
December 2023 - Working Paper31963 This paper offers a new approach to measuring the size of the informal economy based on VAT data for the European Union. Although data intensive, our EVADE measure is simpler and more transparent than existing measures. EVADE also shows more variation across countries of Europe than earlier measures...
May 2023 - Working Paper31207 This paper studies the implications of central bank credibility for long-run inflation and inflation dynamics. We introduce central bank lack of commitment into a standard non-linear New Keynesian economy with sticky-price monopolistically competitive firms. Inflation is driven by the interaction of...
December 1, 2022 - Article
T he real interest rate has dropped sharply in the twenty-first century. To what extent is this likely to be temporary, rather than persistent? In Long-Run Trends in Long-Maturity Real Rates 13112021 (NBER Working Paper 30475), Kenneth Rogoff, Barbara Rossi, and Paul Schmelzing examine a rich...
October 2022 - Working Paper30519 This paper provides new estimates of the housing stock, construction rates and price developments by city tier in China in order to understand where excess supply might be concentrated, and the implications of any significant contraction. We also update estimates of the size of Chinas rapidly...
September 2022 - Working Paper30475 Taking advantage of key recent advances in long-run financial and economic data, this paper analyzes the statistical properties of global long-maturity real interest rates over the past seven centuries. In contrast to existing consensus, which has overwhelmingly concentrated on short samples for...
October 2021 - Working Paper29347 This paper employs an updated algorithm and database for classifying exchange rate and anchor currency choice, to explore the evolution of the global exchange rate system, including parallel rates, capital controls and reserves. In line with a large recent literature, we find that the dollar has...
October 2021 - Working Paper29337 This paper employs high frequency transactions data on the worlds oldest and most extensive centralized peer-to-peer Bitcoin market, which enables trade in the currencies of more than 135 countries. We develop an algorithm that allows, with high probability, the detection of crypto vehicle...
September 2021 - Working Paper29266 Debt in emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) is at its highest level in half a century. In about nine out of 10 EMDEs, debt is higher now than it was in 2010 and, in half of the EMDEs, debt is more than 30 percentage points of gross domestic product higher. Historically, elevated debt...
November 2020 - Working Paper28108 Over the 21st century, and especially since 2014, global exchange rate volatility has been trending downwards, notably among the core G3 currencies (dollar, euro and the yen), and to some extent the G4 (including China). This stability continued through the Covid-19 recession to date: unusual, as...
August 2020 - Working Paper27697 Chinas real estate has been a key engine of its sustained economic expansion. This paper argues, however, that even before the Covid-19 shock, a decades-long housing boom had given rise to severe price misalignments and regional supply-demand mismatches, making an adjustment both necessary and...
April 1, 2020 - Article
There is an inadequate supply of high-quality euro-denominated assets that international investors and central banks can use as a store of value, and no eurozone-wide safe government-backed asset. L aunched in 2002 as the sole legal tender in 12 countries, the euros introduction marked a milestone...
February 2020 - Working Paper26760 On the twentieth anniversary of its inception, the euro has yet to expand its role as an international currency. We document this fact with a wide range of indicators including its role as an anchor or reference in exchange rate arrangementswhich we argue is a portmanteau measureand as a currency...
November 2019 - Working Paper26464 Can massive online retailers such as Amazon and Alibaba issue digital tokens that potentially compete with bank debit accounts? There is a long history of trading stamps and loyalty points, but new technologies are poised to sharply raise the significance of redeemable assets as a store of value....
February 2017 - Working Paper23134 This paper provides a comprehensive history of anchor or reference currencies, exchange rate arrangements, and a new measure of foreign exchange restrictions for 194 countries and territories over 1946-2016. We find that the often-cited post-Bretton Woods transition from fixed to flexible...
February 2017 - Working Paper23135 Detailed country-by-country chronologies are an informative companion piece to our paper Exchange Arrangements Entering the 21st Century: Which Anchor Will Hold?, which provides a comprehensive history of anchor or reference currencies, exchange rate arrangements, and a new measure of foreign...
February 1, 2016 - Book - Conference Volume
September 23, 2015 - Chapter
May 2014 - Working Paper20126 Despite advances in transactions technologies, paper currency still constitutes a notable percentage of the money supply in most countries. For example, it constitutes roughly 10% of the US Federal Reserve's main monetary aggregate, M2. Yet, it has important drawbacks. First, it can help facilitate...
January 2014 - Working Paper19823 We examine the evolution of real per capita GDP around 100 systemic banking crises. Part of the costs of these crises owes to the protracted nature of recovery. On average, it takes about eight years to reach the pre-crisis level of income; the median is about 6 years. Five to six years after the...
March 2013 - Working Paper18888 The mandate of the Federal Reserve has evolved considerably over its hundred-year history. From an initial focus in 1913 on financial stability, to fiscal financing in World War II and its aftermath, to a strong anti-inflation focus from the late 1970s, and then back to greater emphasis on financial...
August 1, 2012 - Article
Debt levels above 90 percent are associated with growth that is 1.2 percent lower than in other periods. Public indebtedness in advanced economies is historically high and rising after the recent financial crisis. In...
April 2012 - Working Paper18015 We identify the major public debt overhang episodes in the advanced economies since the early 1800s, characterized by public debt to GDP levels exceeding 90% for at least five years. Consistent with Reinhart and Rogoff (2010) and other more recent research, we find that public debt overhang episodes...
April 2012 - Working Paper17998 This paper investigates whether oil prices have a reliable and stable out-of-sample relationship with the Canadian/U.S dollar nominal exchange rate. Despite state-of-the-art methodologies, we find little systematic relation between oil prices and the exchange rate at the monthly and quarterly...
October 1, 2011 - Article
As the aftershocks of the recent financial crisis continue to radiate, it is a troubling period for the global economy. While the current popular moniker for the recent crisis is "The Great Recession," perhaps a more appropriate description is "The Second Great Contraction", as Carmen M. Reinhart...
May 1, 2011 - Chapter
This paper uses a data set of over 200 years of sovereign debt, banking, and inflation crises to explore the question of how long it takes a country to graduate from the typical pattern of serial crisis that most emerging markets experience. We find that for default and inflation crises, 20 years is...
February 2011 - Working Paper16827 This paper presents evidence that public debts in the advanced economies have surged in recent years to levels not recorded since the end of World War II, surpassing the heights reached during the First World War and the Great Depression. At the same time, private debt levels, particularly those of...
February 2011 - Working Paper16805 The literature on capital controls has (at least) four very serious apples-to-oranges problems: (i) There is no unified theoretical framework to analyze the macroeconomic consequences of controls; (ii) there is significant heterogeneity across countries and time in the control measures implemented;...
July 2010 - Working Paper16168 This paper uses a data set of over two hundred years of sovereign debt, banking and inflation crises to explore the question of how long it takes a country to "graduate" from the typical pattern of serial crisis that most emerging markets experience. We find that for default and inflation crises,...
April 23, 2010 - Book - Conference Volume
The NBER Macroeconomics Annual provides a forum for important debates in contemporary macroeconomics and major developments in the theory of macroeconomic analysis and policy that include leading economists from a variety of fields. The papers and accompanying discussions in NBER Macroeconomics...
April 1, 2010 - Article
The median growth of the 20 advanced nations in this study fell by half as their debt levels moved from less than 30 percent of GDP to 90 percent or more. Nations typically see growth slow when their debt levels reach 90 percent of gross domestic product. The median growth rate falls by 1 percent...
March 2010 - Working Paper15795 Newly developed long historical time series on public debt, along with modern data on external debts, allow a deeper analysis of the cycles underlying serial debt and banking crises. The evidence confirms a strong link between banking crises and sovereign default across the economic history of great...
January 2010 - Working Paper15639 We study economic growth and inflation at different levels of government and external debt. Our analysis is based on new data on forty-four countries spanning about two hundred years. The dataset incorporates over 3,700 annual observations covering a wide range of political systems, institutions,...
April 2009 - Working Paper14927 We test for changes in price behavior in the longest crude oil price series available (1861-2008). We find strong evidence for changes in persistence and in volatility of price across three well defined periods. We argue that historically, the real price of oil has tended to be highly persistent and...
April 15, 2009 - Book - Conference Volume
The NBER Macroeconomics Annual provides a forum for important debates in contemporary macroeconomics and major developments in the theory of macroeconomic analysis and policy that includes leading economists from a variety of fields. The papers and accompanying discussions in NBER Macroeconomics...
January 2009 - Working Paper14656 This paper examines the depth and duration of the slump that invariably follows severe financial crises, which tend to be protracted affairs. We find that asset market collapses are deep and prolonged. On a peak-to-trough basis, real housing price declines average 35 percent stretched out over six...
