In recent ®nancial crises a bubble, in which asset prices rise, is followed by a collapse and widespread default. Bubbles are caused by agency relationships in the banking sector. Investors use money borrowed from banks to invest in risky assets, which are relatively attractive because investors can avoid losses in low payoff states by defaulting on the loan. This risk shifting leads investors ...

Recessions and other crises seem to occur without any large exogenous shocks. One theory is that this is due to strategic complementarities: the incentive to invest is stronger if others are expected to invest. If, in addition, each investor observes a slightly noisy signal of the true fundamentals, a crisis occurs whenever fundamentals fall below a certain threshold (Morris and Shin, AER 1998)...

Wars and natural disasters causing thousands of deaths and forcing millions to fl ee occur frequently and are widely reported to a global audience. However, responses in terms of charity donations, demonstrations, political response and military intervention are dramatically different between one case and the next. When and why do we care about victims of humanitarian crises? Michael Gross inve...

This chapter was originally published in The Evidence and Impact of Financial Globalization published by Elsevier, and the attached copy is provided by Elsevier for the author's benefit and for the benefit of the author's institution, for noncommercial research and educational use including without limitation use in instruction at your institution, sending it to specific colleagues who you know...

When states collapse. When basic state functions are no longer carried out. When people have no security. Then humanitarian crises erupt. This article will focus on the response to humanitarian crises in relation to state collapse. What are the roles and responsibilities of the media and the political decision-makers respectively? Confronting the problem of state collapse, the stronger states h...

It is anticipated that humanitarian crisis situations will continue to occur in countries of the Eastern Mediterranean Region affecting large segments of vulnerable populations. Subsequently the magnitude and effectiveness of the humanitarian response, particularly for food and nutrition, must be based on best practices and sound information of affected populations. To bridge the burgeoning gap...

By importing food and agricultural goods, countries cope with the heterogeneous global water distribution and often rely on water resources available abroad. The virtual displacement of the water used to produce such goods (known as virtual water) connects together, in a global water system, all countries participating to the international trade network. Local food-production crises, having soc...

International financial integration helps to diversify risk but also may increase the transmission of crises across countries. We provide a quantitative analysis of this trade-off in a two-country general equilibrium model with endogenous portfolio choice and collateral constraints. Collateral constraints bind occasionally, depending upon the state of the economy and levels of inherited debt. T...

This paper argues, first, that, despite some similarities, financial crises in the 1990s have featured substantial differences between them: the ERM crisis of 1992-93 was mainly due to stringent monetary policies; the Mexican crisis of 1994-95 was associated to private overconsumption; and the East Asian crises of 1997-99 were basically the result of private overinvestment. Therefore, as crises...

Currently, three trends mutually influence each other and can be observed using social media: (a) the growing use of social media, in particular Twitter, by organizations, (b) increased expectations of transparency towards organizations, and (c) massive public response to organizational crises via social media. Getting an understanding on how customers and organizations react to crises and cris...