Inspecting the Mechanism: Leverage and the Great Recession in the Eurozone

Philippe Martin and Thomas Philippon ()

American Economic Review, 2017, vol. 107, issue 7, 1904-37

Abstract: We provide a comprehensive account of the dynamics of eurozone countries from 2000 to 2012. We analyze private leverage, fiscal policy, labor costs, and spreads, and we propose a model and an identification strategy to separate the impact of credit cycles, excessive government spending, and sudden stops. We then ask how periphery countries would have fared with different policies. We find that countries could have stabilized their employment if they had followed more conservative fiscal policies during the boom. Macroprudential policies and an early intervention by the central bank to prevent market segmentation and reduce fiscal austerity would also have significantly reduced the recession.

JEL-codes: E24 E32 E58 E62 F33 F42 H61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
Note: DOI: 10.1257/aer.20150630
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (104)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20150630 (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrie ... xbdTnHaXUTi5hdCf1mi9 (application/zip)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrie ... oQ08OX775_LLRcP5YwEF (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrie ... nvigGvRH-GdSv0cXoLxI (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Inspecting the Mechanism: Leverage and the Great Recession in the Eurozone (2017)
Working Paper: Inspecting the Mechanism: Leverage and the Great Recession in the Eurozone (2017)
Working Paper: Inspecting the Mechanism: Leverage and the Great Recession in the Eurozone (2014)
Working Paper: Inspecting the Mechanism Leverage and the Great Recession in the Eurozone (2014)
Working Paper: Inspecting the Mechanism Leverage and the Great Recession in the Eurozone (2014)
Working Paper: Inspecting the Mechanism Leverage and the Great Recession in the Eurozone (2014)
Working Paper: Inspecting the Mechanism: Leverage and the Great Recession in the Eurozone (2014)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:107:y:2017:i:7:p:1904-37

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Review is currently edited by Esther Duflo

More articles in American Economic Review from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().