The U.S. and Irish credit crises: Their distinctive differences and common features

Abstract

Although the 2007–2008 US credit crisis precipitated it, the subsequent Irish credit crisis is an identifiably separate one, which might have occurred in the absence of the U.S. crash. The distinctive differences between them are notable. Many of the apparent causal factors of the U.S. crisis are missing in the Irish case; and the same applies vice versa. At a deeper level, we identify four common features of the two credit crises: capital bonanzas, asset price bubbles, regulatory imprudence, and moral hazard. The particular manifestations of these four “deep” common features are quite different in the two cases.