The run-up to the global financial crisis: A longer historical view of financial liberalization, capital inflows, and asset bubbles

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Using forecast error and sensitivity analyses with a vector error correction model for the US economy, we find that the specific exogenous shocks that contributed to the run-up to the global financial crisis of 2007–2009 vary across the three time periods (1980–1988; 1989–1997; and 1998–2006) that are known for distinctive historical events. Deregulation in the 1980s and capital inflows in the early and mid-1990s triggered by the collapse of the European exchange rate mechanism contributed significantly to changes in real house prices. However, capital inflows after the Asian financial crises in 1997 were driven in large part by rising asset prices. Thus, there were interesting changes in the nature of exogenous shocks and directions of causality through the three sub-periods. These results are robust even after controlling for the exogenous global factors partly determining short-run changes in capital flows, asset prices, and per capita real GDP. We conclude that all of the short run changes in response to financial deregulation starting in the 1980s, surges in capital inflows in the early 1990s, and people's expectation of ever-rising asset prices in the late 1990s and early 2000s culminated in the crisis of 2007–2009. • Different exogenous shocks to the US economy in three different historical periods. • Initiation of deregulation in the 1980s • Sudden surges of capital inflows in the early 1990s following the collapse of the European Monetary System • Asset bubbles in the late 1990s and the early 2000s • All culminated in the global financial crisis of 2007–2009