On Nov 29th, I gave a public lecture on China’s role in the origins and the handling of the financial crisis as part of a lecture series commemorating the 10th anniversary of the global financial crisis.

Building on my research with Iryna Stewen and Yi Huang, I argue that global imbalances were an important factor in the run-up of the crisis. But the crisis was ultimately caused by U.S.specific factors (lax supervision, political pressure to increase home ownership, weak incentives for proper screening).

During the crisis, China reacted with a massive fiscal expansion. This contributed to stabilizing global demand but it also exacerbated the misallocation of capital within China.

The lecture slides are available here (password protected — send me an e-mail for access)