Essays on financial crises, big recessions and slow recoveries

In this thesis I presented two essays motivated by the observation that financial crises tend to be accompanied by deeper recessions and slower recoveries, partly due to debt burden (e.g. Reinhart & Rogoff, 2009; Hong and Tornell, 2005; Jordà, et al., 2013). In the first essay I evaluate this claim against the contrasting view that magnitude and persistence of recessions is rather the consequence of bigger and more persistent shocks (Stock & Watson, 2012). To do so, I compute recovery and recession paths through the estimation of impulse responses by local projections methods (Jordà, 2005). I found that the occurrence of financial crises is associated with more severe recessions only if the recession itself is big enough. But this effect disappears when the output loss caused by the recession is below the historical average. More importantly, neither the magnitude of the loss, nor the occurrence of financial crises, nor debt accumulation are associated with sluggish output growth during recoveries. It has also being suggested that expectations prior to the crisis help to determine the magnitude and length of recessions following financial crises (Chauvet and Guo, 2003; Cerra and Saxena, 2008). This and the role of pre-crisis dynamics is not properly reflected in standard DSGE models. In the second essay I account for the effect of pre- crisis dynamics and evaluate whether financial crises are different. To do so, I introduce optimism (in the form of unrealised news about capital quality) in an otherwise standard DSGE model with financial frictions. Under this framework, optimism generates investment–debt / boom-bust cycles accompanied by long recessions. I found that within this framework cycles associated with financial and technology news shocks are different regarding the responses of asset prices and banks’ net worth. Real variables respond similarly to unjustified financial or technological optimism