When Credit Bites Back: Leverage, Business Cycles and Crises

42 Pages Posted: 29 Oct 2015

See all articles by Oscar Jorda

Oscar Jorda

Federal Reserve Banks - Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco; University of California, Davis - Department of Economics

Moritz Schularick

University of Bonn - Department of Economics; Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

Alan M. Taylor

University of California, Davis - Department of Economics; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

Date Written: November 2011

Abstract

This paper studies the role of credit in the business cycle, with a focus on private credit overhang. Based on a study of the universe of over 200 recession episodes in 14 advanced countries between 1870 and 2008, we document two key facts of the modern business cycle: financial-crisis recessions are more costly than normal recessions in terms of lost output; and for both types of recession, more credit-intensive expansions tend to be followed by deeper recessions and slower recoveries. In additional to unconditional analysis, we use local projection methods to condition on a broad set of macroeconomic controls and their lags. Then we study how past credit accumulation impacts the behavior of not only output but also other key macroeconomic variables such as investment, lending, interest rates, and inflation. The facts that we uncover lend support to the idea that financial factors play an important role in the modern business cycle.

JEL Classification: C14, C52, E51, F32, F42, N10, N20

Suggested Citation

Jorda, Oscar and Schularick, Moritz and Taylor, Alan M., When Credit Bites Back: Leverage, Business Cycles and Crises (November 2011). Institute for New Economic Thinking Working Paper Series No. 20, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2682713 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2682713

Oscar Jorda

Federal Reserve Banks - Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco ( email )

101 Market Street
San Francisco, CA 94105
United States
4159742691 (Phone)

HOME PAGE: http://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/economists/oscar-jorda/

University of California, Davis - Department of Economics ( email )

One Shields Drive
Davis, CA 95616-8578
United States
530-5549382 (Phone)

HOME PAGE: http://old.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/jorda/

Moritz Schularick

University of Bonn - Department of Economics ( email )

Bonn
Germany

Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

London
United Kingdom

Alan M. Taylor (Contact Author)

University of California, Davis - Department of Economics ( email )

One Shields Drive
Davis, CA 95616-8578
United States
530-752-1572 (Phone)
530-752-9382 (Fax)

HOME PAGE: http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/amtaylor/

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States

HOME PAGE: http://nber.org

Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

London
United Kingdom

HOME PAGE: http://cepr.org

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