1、 一、 外文原文 Is the 2007 U.S. Sub-Prime Financial Crisis So Different? An International Historical Comparison Carmen M. Reinhart University of Maryland and the NBER and Kenneth S. Rogoff Harvard University and the NBER The first major financial crisis of the 21st century involves esoteric instruments, u
2、naware regulators, and skittish investors. It also follows a well-trodden path laid down by centuries of financial folly. This time is a problem of sub-prime mortgages, but this time is not different. In fact, there are stunning quantitative parallels across a number of major crisis indicators from
3、the standard literature on international financial crises. For example, the run-up in U.S. equity and housing prices, which Graciela L. Kaminsky and Carmen M. Reinhart (1999) find to the be best leading indicators of crisis in countries experiencing large capital inflows, closely tracks the average
4、of the nineteen major post World War II banking crises in industrial countries. So, too, is the inverted v-shape of real growth in the years prior to the crisis. Despite widespread concern about the effects on national debt of the early 2000s tax cuts, the run-up in U.S. public debt is actually some
5、what below the average of other crisis episodes. In contrast, the pattern of United States current account deficits is markedly worse. The book is still open on the how the current dislocations in the United States will play out, but some precedent can be found in the aftermath of other bank-centere
6、d financial crises in industrial economies. Depending on the degree of trauma to the banking system, they can be quite severe. A severe banking crisis typically has a far deeper and more protracted effect on growth than does a severe currency crisis, if the latter occurs in isolation. The average dr
7、op in (real per capita) output growth is over two percent, and it typically takes two years to return to trend. For the five most catastrophic cases (which include episodes in Finland, Japan, Norway, Spain and Sweden), the drop in annual output growth from peak to trough is over five percent, and gr
8、owth remained well below pre-crisis trend even after three years. It is, of course, the more catastrophic casesthat policymakers particularly want to steer clear of. 1. Post War Bank-Centered Financial Crises: The Data Our main purpose here is to make simple and straightforward comparisons of the Un
9、ited States 2007 crisis with other post-war crises, employing a small piece of a much larger and longer historical data set we have constructed (see Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff, 2008.) The extended data set catalogues banking and financial crises around the entire world dating back to 1800 (in so
10、me cases earlier). In order to focus here on data most relevant to present U.S. situation, we do not consider the plethora of emerging market crises, nor industrialized country financial crises from the Great Depression or the 1800s. Nevertheless, it is striking how much the “this time is different”
11、 syndrome has already been repeated. First came the rationalizations. This time, many analysts argued, the huge run-upin U.S. housing prices was not at all a bubble, but rather justified by financial innovation (including to sub-prime mortgages, as well as by the steady inflow of capital from Asia a
12、nd petroleum exporters. The huge run-up in equity prices was similarly argued to be sustainable thanks to a surge in U.S. productivity growth a fall in risk that accompanied the “Great Moderation” in macroeconomic volatility. As for the extraordinary string of outsized U.S. current account deficits,
13、 which now soak up roughly two-thirds of all the worlds current account surpluses, many analysts argued that these, too, could be justified by new elements of the global economy. Thanks to a combination of a flexible economy and the innovation of the tech boom, the United States could be expected to
14、 enjoy superior productivity growth for decades, while superior American know-how meant higher returns on physical and financial investment than foreigners could expect in the United States. Next came the reality. In the past few month, we have seen a striking contractionin wealth, increases in risk
15、 spreads, and deterioration in market functioning. The 2007 United States sub-prime crisis, of course, has it roots in falling U.S. housing prices, which have in turn led to higher default levels particularly among less credit worthy borrowers. The impact of these defaults on the financial sector ha
16、s been greatly magnified due to complex bundling techniques that were thought to spread risk efficiently, but in fact have made the resulting instruments extremely nontransparent and illiquid in the face of falling house prices. As a benchmark for the 2007 U.S. sub-prime crisis, we draw on data from
17、 nineteen bank-centered financial crises from the post-War period. We have included postwar episodes in which an important financial institution or segment of financial sector collapsed in a manner similar to that described by Kaminsky and Reinhart (1999). For further discussion and documentation, s
18、ee Reinhart and Rogoff (2008). These crisis episodes include: The Five Big Five Crises: Spain (1977), Norway (1987), Finland (1991), Sweden (1991) and Japan (1992), where the starting year is in parenthesis. Other Banking and Financial Crises: Australia (1989), Canada (1983), Denmark (1987), France
19、(1994), Germany (1977), Greece (1991), Iceland (1985), and Italy (1990), and New Zealand (1987), United Kingdom (1974, 1991, 1995), and United States (1984, 2007). The “Big Five” crises are all protracted large scale financial crises that are associated with major declines in economic performance fo
20、r a protracted period. Japan (1992), of course, is the start of the “lost decade,” although the Nordic Crises and the Spanish crisis of 1977 all left deep marks on their economies as well. The remaining rich country financial crises represent a broad range of lesser events. The 1984 U.S. crisis is t
21、he savings and loan crisis and, of course, the 2007 crisis is the sub-prime crisis, which we have represented as a U.S. crisis though of course it has had a severe impact on banks from Europe to Central Asia. While generally all the crises centrally involved the banking system, we have included the
22、1995 UK crisis that resulted from the bankruptcy of Barings, which was essentially an investment bank. We note that one crisis episode not encompassed by our selection criteria is the period of severe bank stress in the U.S. and Europe, especially, caused by the developing country debt crisis that b
23、egan in 1982. We omit it because the bank crisis was not clearly at the epi-center of problem (which had it roots in U.S. disinflation and a drop in world commodity prices). Moreover, it overlaps somewhat with our dating of the thrift crisis. However, including it would not weaken our results. 2. Co
24、mparisons We now proceed to a variety of simple comparisons between the 2007 U.S. crisis and previous episodes. Drawing on the standard literature on financial crises, we look at asset prices, growth and public debt. We begin in Figure 1 by comparing the run-up in housing prices. Period T represents
25、 the year of the onset of the financial crisis. So period T-4 is four years prior to the crisis, and the graph in each case continues to T+3, except of course in the case of the U.S. 2007 crisis.1 The chart confirms the case study literature, showing the significant run-up in housing prices prior to
26、 a financial crisis, with the affect being particularly pronounced for the “Big five” severe cases. Housing prices in the United States, however, have risen even further. Figure 2 looks at real rates of growth in equity market price indices. (For the United States, the index is the S&P 500； Reinhart
27、 and Reinhart, 2008 provide the complete listing for foreign markets.) The U.S. again looks like the archetypical crisis country, only more so. Here, however, the big five crisis countries tended to experience equity price falls earlier on. Of course, each of these crises occurred at different points in the global productivity cycle, which may explain some of the difference. Then, too, the monetary responses differed across these episodes, with the Federal Reserve pumping in an extraordinary amount of stimulus in the early part of the most recent episode.
