This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly

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More About This Book

Overview

Throughout history, rich and poor countries alike have been lending, borrowing, crashing--and recovering--their way through an extraordinary range of financial crises. Each time, the experts have chimed, "this time is different"--claiming that the old rules of valuation no longer apply and that the new situation bears little similarity to past disasters. With this breakthrough study, leading economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff definitively prove them wrong. Covering sixty-six countries across five continents, This Time Is Different presents a comprehensive look at the varieties of financial crises, and guides us through eight astonishing centuries of government defaults, banking panics, and inflationary spikes--from medieval currency debasements to today's subprime catastrophe. Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, leading economists whose work has been influential in the policy debate concerning the current financial crisis, provocatively argue that financial combustions are universal rites of passage for emerging and established market nations. The authors draw important lessons from history to show us how much--or how little--we have learned.

Using clear, sharp analysis and comprehensive data, Reinhart and Rogoff document that financial fallouts occur in clusters and strike with surprisingly consistent frequency, duration, and ferocity. They examine the patterns of currency crashes, high and hyperinflation, and government defaults on international and domestic debts--as well as the cycles in housing and equity prices, capital flows, unemployment, and government revenues around these crises. While countries do weather their financial storms, Reinhart and Rogoff prove that short memories make it all too easy for crises to recur.

An important book that will affect policy discussions for a long time to come, This Time Is Different exposes centuries of financial missteps.

Editorial Reviews

Greg Ip
The research that went into this book has established Reinhart and Rogoff as leading authorities on crises, routinely cited by policymakers, academics and journalists (including me). Everyone working on economic policy should own This Time is Different and open it for a bracing blast of sobriety when things seem to be going well.
—The Washington Post
AidWatch
[A]wesome.
— William Easterly
More Reviews (27) Fewer Reviews
Arkansas Business
Rogoff and Reinhart . . . provide an eye-opening look at the cycles of boom and bust and how governments deal with those cycles.
Barron's
A tour de force of quantitative analysis covering financial crises affecting 66 countries over the past 800 years, the book identifies pre-crisis patterns that recur with eerie consistency. This Time is Different is a must-read for anyone on the lookout for canaries in coal mines.
Bloomberg News
Wouldn't it be nice to have $1,000 for every time a pundit proclaims an era of endless prosperity, consigning booms and busts to the dumpster of history? The next time you hear that canard (and you will) pour yourself a single malt and dip into Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff's landmark study, This Time Is Different. Wherever you open the book, you'll find proof that debt-fueled expansions have ended in financial ruin for hundreds of years. . . . The result is a visual history laid out in beguilingly simple graphs and tables, making the book both definitive—a must read for professors and investors—and accessible to a wider audience.
— James Pressley
Choice
Reinhart and Rogoff have compiled an encyclopedic analysis of the history of financial crises over the last 750 years. But their volume is not merely of historical interest. Rather, it has great relevance for anyone interested in understanding how the current financial crisis is likely to unfold.
CNNMoney.com
Unlike prior narrative accounts of market panics from such finance writers as Charles Kindleberger and Edward Chancellor, Reinhart and Rogoff give us a data-driven study that is global in sweep but also a model of clarity. The authors package their notably nonhysterical analysis of the latest crisis in a large, self-contained section of the book inviting harried readers to skip right ahead to it.
— Daniel Akst
Dow Jones Newswires
[I]nstant classic tome on debt crises.
— Alen Mattich
Econlog.com
This is certainly one of the must-read books of the year.
— Arnold Kling
Economist
[E]ssential reading . . . both for its originality and for the sobering patterns of financial behaviour it reveals.
Finance & Development
Reinhart and Rogoff present a sobering reminder that financial crises are a serial phenomenon—caused in no small part by the seductive 'this-time-is-different syndrome,' the prevalent belief that to us, here and now, old economic laws of motion no longer apply. Their ambitious quantitative history of financial crises draws out sweeping parallels between financial crises, across times and continents; and between inflating away domestic debt, currency debasements, and defaults on external debt.
Financial Times
The four most dangerous words in finance are 'this time is different.' Thanks to this masterpiece by Carmen Reinhart at the University of Maryland and Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard, no one can doubt this again. . . . The authors have put an immense amount of work into collecting the data financial institutions needed if they were to have any chance of making quantitative risk management work.
— Martin Wolf
Forbes.com
Here's a deep and rewarding assignment for all of you, young and old, poor and rich, bullish and bearish. Retire to a quiet spot with a copy of This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, by Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff.
— Bob Lenzner
Globe & Mail
[S]uperb.
— Neil Reynolds
Harvard Business Review
This book's distinctive strength is that it's built around a massive international database going back as far as twelfth-century China and medieval Europe.
Harvard Magazine
This Time is Different . . . is an unusually powerful bull detector designed to protect investors and taxpayers alike—eventually, at least, and provided the spirit is willing. . . . The book's most memorable passages—what the authors call its 'core life'—are to be found not in colorful stories about long-ago personalities, but rather in its various tables and figures. They take some time to comprehend, but any responsible citizen can and ought to consider they evidence they present. It is overwhelming.
— David Warsh
Idaho Statesman
[A] valuable new book.
Irish Times
[T]his is the kind of economics we desperately need, as it is relevant, fact-based and replete with wisdom from the past—and lessons for the future.
National Interest
For those who want to relearn the forgotten lessons of the past, This Time is Different, by economics professors Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, is an excellent place to start. . . . These are lessons worth learning.
— Liaquat Ahamed
New Statesman
The credit crunch of 2007 became the financial crash of 2008 and the recession of 2009. But there has been much debate about the scale of this crisis, and how it ranks against previous events. Reinhart and Rogoff have produced the most detailed study yet of financial crises, going back as far as 12th-century China. . . . [This Time is Different] will be a vital source of reference in debates on the causes and consequences of financial crises. By cataloguing so thoroughly every known instance of financial crisis, it performs a significant service and opens up new lines of inquiry.
— Andrew Gamble
New York Review of Books
This Time is Different takes a Sergeant Friday, just-the-facts-ma'am approach: before we start theorizing, let's take a hard look at what history tells us. One side benefit of this approach is that the current book manages to be both extremely useful to professional economists and accessible to the intelligent lay reader. The Reinhart-Rogoff approach has already paid off handsomely in making sense of current events.
— Robin Wells and Paul Krugman
New York Times
[A] terrific book.
— Andrew Ross Sorkin
Newsweek
[A] fine new history of financial debacles.
— Daniel Gross
Nikkei Weekly
One book in particular has been circulating among economists and market insiders. This Time is Different analyzes vast amounts of historical data on financial debacles, including state failures around the world, bank crises, currency woes and high inflation. The title satirizes those who fail to learn from past blunders and repeat them while insisting, 'This time is different.'
— Hideo Tsuchiya
Shanghai Daily
Having studied mountains of economic data during the past eight centuries, the authors insightfully point out the highly repetitive nature of financial crises resulted from a dangerous mix of hubris, euphoria and amnesia.
The American Interest
Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff have delivered a powerful and eloquent statement. . . . Reinhart and Rogoff have done an extraordinary job in putting together statistics on government debt—a task that economic historians should have done long ago but shied away from because of the difficulties of defining 'government', which is often complex and multi-layered.
— Harold James
USA Today
Financial folly, economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff show in this groundbreaking book, knows no boundaries and has no expiration date. . . . For a book built around numbers, This Time is Different makes for surprisingly good reading. The authors are well aware that human nature is at the heart of the disasters they document, and they enliven the text with brief and amusing accounts of charlatans and cheats.
— Paul Wiseman
Wall Street Journal
[O]ne of the most important economic books of 2009.
— Jon Hilsenrath
Washington Post
Everyone working on economic policy should own This Time is Different and open it for a bracing blast of sobriety when things seem to be going well.
— Greg Ip

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780691152646
  • Publisher: Princeton University Press
  • Publication date: 9/7/2011
  • Pages: 512
  • Sales rank: 27,777
  • Product dimensions: 5.50 (w) x 8.40 (h) x 1.60 (d)

Meet the Author


Carmen M. Reinhart is the Dennis Weatherstone Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. She was previously professor of economics at the University of Maryland. Kenneth S. Rogoff is the Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy and professor of economics at Harvard University. He is a frequent commentator for "NPR", the "Wall Street Journal", and the "Financial Times".

Table of Contents

LIST OF TABLES xiii

LIST OF FIGURES xvii

LIST OF BOXES xxiii

PREFACE xxv

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xxxvii

PREAMBLE: SOME INITIAL INTUITIONS ON FINANCIAL FRAGILITY AND THE FICKLE NATURE OF CONFIDENCE xxxix

PART I: Financial Crises: An Operational Primer 1

Chapter 1: Varieties of Crises and Their Dates 3

Crises Defined by Quantitative Thresholds: Inflation, Currency Crashes, and Debasement 4

Crises Defined by Events: Banking Crises and External and Domestic Default 8

Other Key Concepts 14

Chapter 2: Debt Intolerance: The Genesis of Serial Default 21

Debt Thresholds 21

Measuring Vulnerability 25

Clubs and Regions 27

Reflections on Debt Intolerance 29

Chapter 3: A Global Database on Financial Crises with a Long-Term View 34

Prices, Exchange Rates, Currency Debasement, and Real GDP 35

Government Finances and National Accounts 39

Public Debt and Its Composition 40

Global Variables 43

Country Coverage 43

PART II: Sovereign External Debt Crises 49

Chapter 4: A Digression on the Theoretical Underpinnings of Debt Crises 51

Sovereign Lending 54

Illiquidity versus Insolvency 59

Partial Default and Rescheduling 61

Odious Debt 63

Domestic Public Debt 64

Conclusions 67

Chapter 5: Cycles of Sovereign Default on External Debt 68

Recurring Patterns 68

Default and Banking Crises 73

Default and Inflation 75

Global Factors and Cycles of Global External Default 77

The Duration of Default Episodes 81

Chapter 6: External Default through History 86

The Early History of Serial Default: Emerging Europe, 1300-1799 86

Capital Inflows and Default: An "Old World" Story 89

External Sovereign Default after 1800: A Global Picture 89

PART III: The Forgotten History of Domestic Debt and Default 101

Chapter 7: The Stylized Facts of Domestic Debt and Default 103

Domestic and External Debt 103

Maturity, Rates of Return, and Currency Composition 105

Episodes of Domestic Default 110

Some Caveats Regarding Domestic Debt 111

Chapter 8: Domestic Debt: The Missing Link Explaining External Default and High Inflation 119

Understanding the Debt Intolerance Puzzle 119

Domestic Debt on the Eve and in the Aftermath of External Default 123

The Literature on Inflation and the "Inflation Tax" 124

Defining the Tax Base: Domestic Debt or the Monetary Base? 125

The "Temptation to Inflate" Revisited 127

Chapter 9: Domestic and External Default: Which Is Worse? Who Is Senior? 128

Real GDP in the Run-up to and the Aftermath of Debt Defaults 129

Inflation in the Run-up to and the Aftermath of Debt Defaults 129

The Incidence of Default on Debts Owed to External and Domestic Creditors 133

Summary and Discussion of Selected Issues 136

PART IV: Banking Crises, Inflation, and Currency Crashes 139

Chapter 10: Banking Crises 141

A Preamble on the Theory of Banking Crises 143

Banking Crises: An Equal-Opportunity Menace 147

Banking Crises, Capital Mobility, and Financial Liberalization 155

Capital Flow Bonanzas, Credit Cycles, and Asset Prices 157

Overcapacity Bubbles in the Financial Industry? 162

The Fiscal Legacy of Financial Crises Revisited 162

Living with the Wreckage: Some Observations 171

Chapter 11: Default through Debasement: An "Old World Favorite" 174

Chapter 12: Inflation and Modern Currency Crashes 180

An Early History of Inflation Crises 181

Modern Inflation Crises: Regional Comparisons 182

Currency Crashes 189

The Aftermath of High Inflation and Currency Collapses 191

Undoing Domestic Dollarization 193

PART V: The U.S. Subprime Meltdown and the Second Great Contraction 199

Chapter 13: The U.S. Subprime Crisis: An International and Historical Comparison 203

A Global Historical View of the Subprime Crisis and Its Aftermath 204

The This-Time-Is-Different Syndrome and the Run-up to the Subprime Crisis 208

Risks Posed by Sustained U.S. Borrowing from the Rest of the World: The Debate before the Crisis 208

The Episodes of Postwar Bank-Centered Financial Crisis 215

A Comparison of the Subprime Crisis with Past Crises in Advanced Economies 216

Summary 221

Chapter 14: The Aftermath of Financial Crises 223

Historical Episodes Revisited 225

The Downturn after a Crisis: Depth and Duration 226

The Fiscal Legacy of Crises 231

Sovereign Risk 232

Comparisons with Experiences from the First Great Contraction in the 1930s 233

Concluding Remarks 238

Chapter 15: The International Dimensions of the Subprime Crisis:

The Results of Contagion or Common Fundamentals? 240

Concepts of Contagion 241

Selected Earlier Episodes 241

Common Fundamentals and the Second Great Contraction 242

Are More Spillovers Under Way? 246

Chapter 16: Composite Measures of Financial Turmoil 248

Developing a Composite Index of Crises: The BCDI Index 249

Defining a Global Financial Crisis 260

The Sequencing of Crises: A Prototype 270

Summary 273

PART VI: What Have We Learned? 275

Chapter 17: Reflections on Early Warnings, Graduation, Policy Responses, and the Foibles of Human Nature 277

On Early Warnings of Crises 278

The Role of International Institutions 281

Graduation 283

Some Observations on Policy Responses 287

The Latest Version of the This-Time-Is-Different Syndrome 290

DATA APPENDIXES 293

A.1. Macroeconomic Time Series 295

A.2. Public Debt 327

A.3. Dates of Banking Crises 344

A.4. Historical Summaries of Banking Crises 348

NOTES 393

REFERENCES 409

NAME INDEX 435

SUBJECT INDEX 443

Customer Reviews

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See All Sort by: Showing 1 – 20 of 29 Customer Reviews

  • Posted November 17, 2009

    more from this reviewer

    Sobering study of fiscal failures

    Every so often, experts sucker people into bidding up the prices of stocks or real estate because they announce that the economy has fundamentally changed. As the aftermath of the real estate bubble illustrates, the basics of economics don't really change, no matter what fantasies people come to believe. Economics professors Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff present a thorough historical and statistical tour of financial hubris through the centuries, a postmortem that will make you wonder how anyone ever believed "this time is different." The staid tone, formulas, charts and somewhat confusing organization make this fascinating history challenging to absorb. Yet, the content, which sweeps ambitiously and carefully across centuries and countries, rewards the persistent reader with many insights and gems, like the nation-by-nation appendix of fiscal history low points. getAbstract recommends this analytical overview to history buffs, investors, managers and policy makers who seek perspective on "financial folly."

    8 out of 8 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted February 7, 2010

    Excllent book

    This book refutes the claims ( recently advocated by wall street bankers) that the US financial crisis is a one in a hundred year event and could not be predictable. In fact, and as Reinhart and Rogoff clearly show in their excellent book "This Time Is DIfferent", recent history is full of financial and banking crisis. If bankers and politicians paid more attention and learned from prior experiences, 2008 financial crisis could have been averted.

    5 out of 5 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted January 16, 2010

    Clear Writing, Careful Research, Fad Immunizing

    The book was nearly finished before the most recent collapse, since the project must have taken a great deal of time. It clearly states the case that we must avoid herd and self delusion in financial matters -- but we seldom do. A decade ago I remember the derision being heaped upon the "old economy" as opposed to the miracles of anything having a patina of "high tech." Before the recent collapse the wizard masters of the financial universe believed that certain algorithms could determine the credit worthiness of undefined and black-box financial instruments in the absence of old fashioned and stodgy research. As Britney would say, "Oops.did it again."

    The book is fascinating history. History as revelation, not bunko."

    4 out of 4 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted January 9, 2010

    Great information - Tough Slog

    The information presented in this book is very relevent to business today. However, it is a tough read. Geared for those with a greater acedemic bent than Devil Take the Hindmost or other similar books.

    4 out of 4 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted November 21, 2011

    Tells why every investment, including in the mattress, is a risk.

    This book provides a great historical summary of why every financial institution and government is just a little suspect. The question is not who does not default, but how, and how frequently. Don't use your Nook for this one. You need the hardcopy to read the charts and diagrams. Though the book is long and complex, since the authors are trying to lay out the whole financial history of the last several hundred years, just reviewing the charts tells most of the story. It's hard to ever look at that dollar bill in your wallet in the same way.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted January 25, 2012

    Hard to Understand

    I'm certain of the competence of the authors. However, this is book is hard for a reasonably educated layperson (JD MA in History) to understand. It would appeal to others in the financial industry.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted March 27, 2010

    I Received The Book Promptly

    I have no complaints, this book was sent promptly. B&N does a good job of filling your orders.

    0 out of 5 people found this review helpful.

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