IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedmep/17-1.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Great Recession: A Macroeconomic Earthquake

Author

Listed:
  • Lawrence J. Christiano

Abstract

The Great Recession was particularly severe and has endured far longer than most recessions. Economists now believe it was caused by a perfect storm of declining home prices, a financial system heavily invested in house-related assets and a shadow banking system highly vulnerable to bank runs or rollover risk. It has lasted longer than most recessions because economically damaged households were unwilling or unable to increase spending, thus perpetuating the recession by a mechanism known as the paradox of thrift. Economists believe the Great Recession wasn?t foreseen because the size and fragility of the shadow banking system had gone unnoticed. {{p}} The recession has had an inordinate impact on macroeconomics as a discipline, leading economists to reconsider two largely discarded theories: IS-LM and the paradox of thrift. It has also forced theorists to better understand and incorporate the financial sector into their models, the most promising of which focus on mismatch between the maturity periods of assets and liabilities held by banks.

Suggested Citation

  • Lawrence J. Christiano, 2017. "The Great Recession: A Macroeconomic Earthquake," Economic Policy Paper 17-1, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedmep:17-1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.minneapolisfed.org/~/media/files/pubs/eppapers/17-1/the-great-recession-a-macroeconomic-earthquake.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gertler, M. & Kiyotaki, N. & Prestipino, A., 2016. "Wholesale Banking and Bank Runs in Macroeconomic Modeling of Financial Crises," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1345-1425, Elsevier.
    2. Gauti B. Eggertsson & Michael Woodford, 2003. "The Zero Bound on Interest Rates and Optimal Monetary Policy," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 34(1), pages 139-235.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Brancaccio, Emiliano & Califano, Andrea & Lopreite, Milena & Moneta, Alessio, 2020. "Nonperforming loans and competing rules of monetary policy: A statistical identification approach," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 127-136.
    2. Hamed Ghiaie, 2018. "Shadow Bank run, Housing and Credit Market: The Story of a Recession," THEMA Working Papers 2018-01, THEMA (THéorie Economique, Modélisation et Applications), Université de Cergy-Pontoise.
    3. Terrie Walmsley & Adam Rose & Dan Wei, 2021. "The Impacts of the Coronavirus on the Economy of the United States," Economics of Disasters and Climate Change, Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 1-52, April.
    4. Ghiaie Hamed, 2020. "Shadow Bank Run, Housing and Credit Market: The Story of a Recession," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 20(2), pages 1-30, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lawrence J. Christiano & Martin S. Eichenbaum & Mathias Trabandt, 2018. "On DSGE Models," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 32(3), pages 113-140, Summer.
    2. Stijn Claessens & M Ayhan Kose, 2018. "Frontiers of macrofinancial linkages," BIS Papers, Bank for International Settlements, number 95, October –.
    3. Gregor Bäurle & Daniel Kaufmann, 2014. "Exchange rate and price dynamics in a small open economy - the role of the zero lower bound and monetary policy regimes," Working Papers 2014-10, Swiss National Bank.
    4. Athanasios Geromichalos & Lucas Herrenbrueck, 2022. "The Liquidity-Augmented Model of Macroeconomic Aggregates: A New Monetarist DSGE Approach," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 45, pages 134-167, July.
    5. Gürkaynak, Refet S. & Kısacıkoğlu, Burçin & Lee, Sang Seok, 2022. "Exchange rate and inflation under weak monetary policy: Turkey verifies theory," CFS Working Paper Series 679, Center for Financial Studies (CFS).
    6. Guido Ascari & Sophocles Mavroeidis & Nigel McClung, 2023. "Coherence without Rationality at the ZLB," DEM Working Papers Series 212, University of Pavia, Department of Economics and Management.
    7. R. Anton Braun & Yuichiro Waki, 2006. "Monetary Policy During Japan'S Lost Decade," The Japanese Economic Review, Japanese Economic Association, vol. 57(2), pages 324-344, June.
    8. Antinolfi, Gaetano & Azariadis, Costas & Bullard, James, 2016. "The Optimal Inflation Target In An Economy With Limited Enforcement," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 20(2), pages 582-600, March.
    9. Paustian, Matthias & Stoltenberg, Christian, 2008. "Optimal interest rate stabilization in a basic sticky-price model," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 32(10), pages 3166-3191, October.
    10. Bing Tong & Guang Yang, 2020. "A Fixed-Interest-Rate New Keynesian Model of China," CFDS Discussion Paper Series 2020/1, Center for Financial Development and Stability at Henan University, Kaifeng, Henan, China.
    11. Yoshito Funashima, 2022. "Economic policy uncertainty and unconventional monetary policy," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 90(3), pages 278-292, June.
    12. George-Marios Angeletos & Chen Lian, 2018. "Forward Guidance without Common Knowledge," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(9), pages 2477-2512, September.
    13. Toshiaki Ogawa & Masato Ubukata & Toshiaki Watanabe, 2020. "Stock Return Predictability and Variance Risk Premia around the ZLB," IMES Discussion Paper Series 20-E-09, Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan.
    14. Pathberiya, Lasitha R.C., 2024. "Monetary policy rules and zero lower bound on nominal interest rates in a cost-channel economy," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    15. Darracq Pariès, Matthieu & Kühl, Michael, 2016. "The optimal conduct of central bank asset purchases," Working Paper Series 1973, European Central Bank.
    16. Belke, Ansgar, 2010. "Financial Crisis, Global Liquidity and Monetary Exit Strategies," Ruhr Economic Papers 183, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    17. Crump, Richard K. & Eusepi, Stefano & Tambalotti, Andrea & Topa, Giorgio, 2022. "Subjective intertemporal substitution," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 118-133.
    18. Swanson, Eric T., 2021. "Measuring the effects of federal reserve forward guidance and asset purchases on financial markets," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 32-53.
    19. Matthew Rognlie & Andrei Shleifer & Alp Simsek, 2018. "Investment Hangover and the Great Recession," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 10(2), pages 113-153, April.
    20. Christophe Blot & Jérôme Creel & Paul Hubert & Fabien Labondance, 2015. "The QE experience: Worth a try?," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-03568216, HAL.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedmep:17-1. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Jannelle Ruswick (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cfrbmus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.