We update the widely used banking crises database by Laeven and Valencia (2008, 2010) with new information on recent and ongoing crises, including updated information on policy responses and outcomes (i.e. fiscal costs, output losses, and increases in public debt). We also update our dating of sovereign debt and currency crises. The database includes all systemic banking, currency, and sovereign debt crises during the period 1970-2011. The data show some striking differences in policy responses between advanced and emerging economies as well as many similarities between past and ongoing crises.

An empirical investigation of financial crises during the last 800 years.

Faced with a systemic financial sector crisis, policymakers need to make difficult choices under pressure. Based on the experience of many countries in recent years, few have been able to achieve a speedy, lasting and low-cost resolution. This volume considers the strengths and weaknesses of the various policy options, covering both microeconomic (including recapitalization of banks, bank closures, subsidies for distressed borrowers, capital adequacy rules and corporate governance and bankruptcy law requirements) and macroeconomic (including monetary and fiscal policy) dimensions. The contributors explore the important but little understood trade-offs that are involved, such as between policies which take effect quickly, those which minimize long-term fiscal and economic costs, and those which create favorable incentives for future stability. Successfully implementing crisis management and crisis resolution policy required attention to detail and a good flow of information.

Crisis and Response: An FDIC History, 2008¿2013 reviews the experience of the FDIC during a period in which the agency was confronted with two interconnected and overlapping crises¿first, the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009, and second, a banking crisis that began in 2008 and continued until 2013. The history examines the FDIC¿s response, contributes to an understanding of what occurred, and shares lessons from the agency¿s experience.

Why stable banking systems are so rare Why are banking systems unstable in so many countries—but not in others? The United States has had twelve systemic banking crises since 1840, while Canada has had none. The banking systems of Mexico and Brazil have not only been crisis prone but have provided miniscule amounts of credit to business enterprises and households. Analyzing the political and banking history of the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Brazil through several centuries, Fragile by Design demonstrates that chronic banking crises and scarce credit are not accidents. Calomiris and Haber combine political history and economics to examine how coalitions of politicians, bankers, and other interest groups form, why they endure, and how they generate policies that determine who gets to be a banker, who has access to credit, and who pays for bank bailouts and rescues. Fragile by Design is a revealing exploration of the ways that politics inevitably intrudes into bank regulation.

We provide new firm-level evidence on the effects of capital account liberalization. Based on corporate foreign-currency credit ratings data and a novel capital account restrictions index, we find that capital controls can substantially limit access to, and raise the cost of, foreign currency debt, especially for firms without foreign currency revenues. As an identification strategy, we exploit, via a difference-in-difference approach, within-country variation in firms' access to foreign currency, measured by whether or not a firm belongs to the nontradables sector. Nontradables firms benefit substantially more from capital account liberalization than others, a finding that is robust to a broad range of alternative specifications.

Bank failures, like illness and taxes, are almost a certainty at some time in the future. What is less certain is their cost to and adverse implications for macroeconomies. Past failures have frequently been resolved at very high cost to society. However, the cost could be reduced through having a well-developed, credible and widely publicized plan ready to put into action by policymakers. If no such plan is ready when a large bank approaches insolvency, political pressures are likely to influence the response of regulators.Minimizing immediate, short-run costs are likely to outweigh minimizing further out, longer-run and longer-lasting costs, even if these delayed costs promise to be substantially greater. Stated differently, today will win out over tomorrow and politics will trump economics. How best to prevent such unfavorable outcomes is the major theme of this volume. The articles presented review past insolvency resolutions, draw lessons from these resolutions, discuss impediments to efficient resolutions — including cross-country, cross-regulator, and institutional challenges — and recommend how to move forward.