Explaining Financial Crises

This book develops a new theoretical approach to the explanation of systemic financial crises in industrial and emerging market countries. In contrast to standard models, the present cyclical approach is consistent with the following three stylized facts. Firstly, systemic financial crises are a recurrent phenomenon generally accompanied by excessive boom-bust cycles. Secondly, the frequency of financial crisis cycles is very irregular. Thirdly, most financial crisis cycles are initiated by positive shocks to profit expectations which induce an unsustainable build-up of financial fragility driven by irrational exuberance. The present approach is based on a sophisticated balancesheet structure with many assets, as well as on an expectation formation scheme which combines the rational expectations hypothesis with Keynes' Beauty Contest Theory.

Autorentext

The Author: Marc Peter Radke was born in 1972 in Ludwigsburg. After graduation from grammar school in 1992, he did an apprenticeship as a bank clerk in Stuttgart which he completed in 1994. From 1994 to 1999 he studied economics and business management at the University of Hohenheim. From 1999 to 2005 he was a research and teaching assistant with the Department of Economics at the University of Hohenheim and received his Ph.D. in economics in 2005. He is now working as an economist for the Deutsche Bundesbank in Frankfurt am Main.

Inhalt

Contents: Financial Crises and Financial Instability: Definitions and Principles - Stylized Facts and Standard Theory of Financial Crises - A Model of Financial Crises and Endogenous Fluctuations in Industrial Countries - **A Model of Financial Crises and Endogenous Fluctuations in Emerging Market Countries - A Calibration Model of Financial Crises in Emerging Markets.