Abstract:The global financial crisis began in 2007, and we are still feeling its effects.It involved the collapse or near-collapse of large commercial banks, hugely expensive interventions by governments to gu...The global financial crisis began in 2007, and we are still feeling its effects.It involved the collapse or near-collapse of large commercial banks, hugely expensive interventions by governments to guarantee deposits and buy bank assets, a steep decline in bank lending to individuals and businesses, significant falls in consumer activity both domestic and international, and a resulting reduction in trade.Government indebtedness due to the crisis has resulted in diminished welfare states in Western Europe and a worsening of the position of the worst off in developed countries.In the United States, repossessions of properties rose very markedly after 2006, and members of both low-and middleincome groups have at times been very badly affected.Two natural and related questions about the crisis are "What caused it?"and "Who, if anyone, is to blame?"Neither admits of a simple answer.The first is caught up with the difficulty of establishing an uncontroversial narrative of the crisis that is suitably related to data on previous, more local, financial crises. 1 The problem of a reliable narrative also affects the question of blame-1.The literature on financial crises identifies at least four distinct types, which in practice often overlap.The criteria for identifying an event as a crisis of a particular type are disputed, as are the explanations for how each occurs.Such uncertainty also creates challenges for identifying the real effects of crises.On these points, and their relation to analysis of the recent crisis, see StijnRead More