Academic Scholarship in Light of the 2008 Financial Crisis: Textual Analysis of NBER Working Papers

Abstract

Textual analysis of the NBER Working Papers published during 1999–2016 is done to assess the effects of the 2007–2009 crisis on the academic literature. The volume of crisis-related WPs is counter-cyclical, lagging the financial-instability-index. WPs by the Monetary-Economics, Asset-Pricing, and Corporate-Finance program members, hardly refer to “crisis/crises” in the pre-crisis period. As the crisis develops, however, their study-efforts of crisis-related issues increase rapidly, focusing on the links between ‘Repo-and-Securitization’ and the crisis. In contrast, WPs in macroeconomics-related programs refer extensively to “crisis/crises” in the pre-crisis period. These WPs abandon topics of ‘Sudden-Stop’ and ‘Emerging-Markets’ as the crisis developed