Resources on the financial crisis
A lot has been written on the financial crisis, and there will be even more to come. But here are my recommendations for those seeking to understand the real causes of what went wrong.
(The lecture notes for this talk are here).
Well-written, populist books:
- Financial Fiasco, Norberg, J., Cato Institute, 2010
- Meltdown, Woods, Thomas, A., Regnery, 2009
Policy-focused pamphlets:
- The House That Uncle Sam Built, Boettke, P.J. & Horwitz, S., Mercatus Center, December 2nd 2009
- Questions and Answers about the Financial Crisis (.pdf), Gorton, G., (Prepared for the U.S. Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission), February 20, 2010
Thorough, academic accounts:
- Verdict on the crash: causes and policy implications, Booth, P., (ed), Institute of Economic Affairs, 2009
- What caused the financial crisis, Friedman, J., (ed) University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011
- Engineering the financial crisis, Friedman, J., and Kraus, W., University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011
Entertaining and informative videos:
- ‘Fear the boom and bust‘, John Papola & Russ Roberts
- ‘Fight of the Century‘, John Papola & Russ Roberts
- ‘The crisis of credit visualised‘ Jonathan Jarvis
My own account of the UK experience is:
- 2015 “The financial crisis in the United Kingdom. Uncertainty, calculation and error” in Boettke, Peter J., and Coyne, Christopher J., (Eds) The Oxford Handbook of Austrian Economics, Oxford University Press
- And here is a report I wrote on whether we can “predict” financial crises