Financial Crises In Spain: Lessons From The Last 150 Years

Abstract

The financial disturbances that originated in the US in the second half of 2007 are the latest in a series of episodes in various regions of the world in recent years. However, financial crises are not unique to current financial systems, history being full of banking and exchange rate crises. Are crises alike? Do they share similar features or, on the contrary, are they strikingly distinct? Have they become more frequent, longer-lasting and more severe since the 20th century? Are we now living in a more vulnerable financial world? What does history tell us when comparing past and present crises? This paper chooses to address some of these questions for the case of Spain. The objective of this paper is to study the financial crises that have occurred in Spain over the last 150 years. Data are revised and different indicators constructed to identify financial crises. We consider all types of crises, namely currency, banking, stock market and debt crises and all their possible combinations, estimate their frequency by period and measure their length and depth. The Spanish case is compared to the results obtained for multi-country analyses in order to test whether the general conclusions obtained in those papers hold for one sole country. Finally, we perform an analysis of the main financial crises in order to establish hypotheses that could be tested in future research.financial crises, currency, banking, stock market and debt crises, Spanish banking history.