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The Great Recession: A Macroeconomic Earthquake

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  • 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
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. 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.
    2. 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.
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    Cited by:

    1. 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), CY Cergy-Paris University, ESSEC and CNRS.
    2. 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.
    3. 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.
    4. 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.

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