About the Book
The acclaimed New York Times bestselling history of financial crises
Throughout history, rich and poor countries alike have been lending, borrowing, crashing, and recovering their way through an extraordinary range of financial crises. Each time, the experts have chimed, "this time is different"--claiming that the old rules of valuation no longer apply and that the new situation bears little similarity to past disasters. With this breakthrough study, leading economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff definitively prove them wrong.
Covering sixty-six countries across five continents and eight centuries, This Time Is Different presents a comprehensive look at the varieties of financial crises--including government defaults, banking panics, and inflationary spikes--from medieval currency debasements to the subprime mortgage catastrophe. Reinhart and Rogoff provocatively argue that financial combustions are universal rites of passage for emerging and established market nations.
A remarkable history of financial folly, This Time Is Different will influence financial and economic thinking and policy for decades to come.
About the Author :
Carmen M. Reinhart is the Minos A. Zombanakis Professor of the International Financial System at the Harvard Kennedy School and former vice president and chief economist at the World Bank. Kenneth S. Rogoff is the Maurits C. Boas Chair of International Economics at Harvard University. He is the author of The Curse of Cash (Princeton) and a frequent commentator for NPR, the Wall Street Journal, and the Financial Times.
Review :
"An eye-opening look at the cycles of boom and bust and how governments deal with those cycles."-- "Arkansas Business"
"Essential reading . . . both for its originality and for the sobering patterns of financial behaviour it reveals."-- "The Economist"
"This is the kind of economics we desperately need, as it is relevant, fact-based and replete with wisdom from the past--and lessons for the future."-- "Irish Times"
"Finalist for the 2009 Business Book Award ("Best of the Rest") in Current Interest, 800-CEO-READ"
"Finalist for the 2011 Estoril Global Issues Distinguished Book Prize"
"Kenneth Rogoff, Recipient of the 2011 Deutsche Bank Prize in Financial Economics, Center for Financial Studies"
"Listed on Bloomberg.com by James Pressley as one of "our favorite financial-crisis books this year""
"One of Library Journal Best Business Books - Economics/U.S. Economy category"
"One of USA Today's "Year's Best Business Books To Make Sense of Financial Crisis""
"Runner-Up for the Book of the Year, The Atlantic"
"Shortlisted for the 2010 Spear's Book of the Year Award in Financial History"
"Winner of the 2010 Paul A. Samuelson Award, TIAA-CREF"
"Winner of the 2011 Gold Medal Arthur Ross Book Award, Council on Foreign Relations"
"[A] valuable new book."-- "Idaho Statesman"
"Having studied mountains of economic data during the past eight centuries, the authors insightfully point out the highly repetitive nature of financial crises resulted from a dangerous mix of hubris, euphoria and amnesia."-- "Shanghai Daily"
"Reinhart and Rogoff have compiled an encyclopedic analysis of the history of financial crises over the last 750 years. But their volume is not merely of historical interest. Rather, it has great relevance for anyone interested in understanding how the current financial crisis is likely to unfold."-- "Choice"
"Reinhart and Rogoff present a sobering reminder that financial crises are a serial phenomenon--caused in no small part by the seductive 'this-time-is-different syndrome, ' the prevalent belief that to us, here and now, old economic laws of motion no longer apply. Their ambitious quantitative history of financial crises draws out sweeping parallels between financial crises, across times and continents; and between inflating away domestic debt, currency debasements, and defaults on external debt."-- "Finance & Development"
"The book by Reinhart and Rogoff is one for the ages, and it will be remembered as a landmark event, not least given the coincidence of its publication of such a deep and broad historical analysis of economic crises with the very moment when the world was entering a massive 'hundred year flood' type of calamity. The authors' empirical work is encyclopedic and much of the data are highly original and the result of intense effort. The necessary theoretical framing is provided, but in terms that all target readers should be able to absorb. The overall view is panoramic and the message carried is an important one for all to hear--policymakers, commentators, and researchers. Crises are still with us, they are very painful indeed, and perhaps it will always be so. It is up to us to figure out why and how crises happen, and to figure out what, if anything, can and should be done to mitigate their devastating effects in future. This book is therefore, above all, a call to action."-- "Journal of Economic Literature"
"This book's distinctive strength is that it's built around a massive international database going back as far as twelfth-century China and medieval Europe."-- "Harvard Business Review"
"[This Time Is Different] is an unusually powerful bull detector designed to protect investors and taxpayers alike--eventually, at least, and provided the spirit is willing. . . . The book's most memorable passages--what the authors call its 'core life'--are to be found not in colorful stories about long-ago personalities, but rather in its various tables and figures. They take some time to comprehend, but any responsible citizen can and ought to consider the evidence they present. It is overwhelming."---David Warsh, Harvard Magazine
"This Time Is Different changes the way we can study financial crises. It is the start of a truly comprehensive approach to the subject. . . . It adds new ideas that will be useful for gauging the risk of future crises and perhaps even reducing their impact, if investors and policymakers are willing to learn from other people's mistakes, not just their own."---Kurt Schuler, CATO Journal
"This Time Is Different doesn't simply explain what went wrong in our most recent crisis. This book also provides a roadmap of how things are likely to pan out in the years to come."---Edward Chancellor, Wall Street Journal
"[An] instant classic."---Alen Mattich, Dow Jones Newswires
"[A] landmark work."---Megan McArdle, The Atlantic
"[Rogoff and Reinhart] know more about the history of financial crises than anyone alive. . . . In an era when most 'analysts' rely on maybe 30 or 40 years' worth of financial history--and then only that of the U.S.--the authors' knowledge of financial crises and government bond defaults going back to the Spanish empire and before offers a richer perspective."---Brett Arends, Wall Street Journal
"A magisterial work on the causes and consequences of crises stretching back 800 years."---Matthew Valencia, Economist.com
"A powerful and eloquent statement. . . . Reinhart and Rogoff have done an extraordinary job in putting together statistics on government debt--a task that economic historians should have done long ago but shied away from because of the difficulties of defining 'government, ' which is often complex and multi-layered."---Harold James, American Interest
"A tour de force of quantitative analysis covering financial crises affecting 66 countries over the past 800 years, the book identifies pre-crisis patterns that recur with eerie consistency. This Time Is Different is a must-read for anyone on the lookout for canaries in coal mines."-- "Barron's"
"A vital source of reference in debates on the causes and consequences of financial crises."---Andrew Gamble, New Statesman
"Among policy experts and economists, This Time Is Different . . . has become so influential that when somebody says, 'We live in a Reinhart-Rogoff world, ' everybody else in the room nods sagely."---Justin Lahart, Wall Street Journal
"Awesome."---William Easterly, AidWatch
"Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff take a much-needed longer view, placing the current crisis, with a focus on the U.S. housing bubble, into historical perspective."---Anil Hira, Perspectives on Politics
"Compelling. . . . The essence of [This Time Is Different] is that while financial crises come in different varieties, they are not mysteriously born of undersea earthquakes, but frequently occurring events that can be spotted and even controlled if politicians and regulators know what to look for."---Devin Leonard, New York Times
"Everyone working on economic policy should own This Time Is Different and open it for a bracing blast of sobriety when things seem to be going well."---Greg Ip, Washington Post
"Financial folly, economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff show in this groundbreaking book, knows no boundaries and has no expiration date. . . . For a book built around numbers, This Time Is Different makes for surprisingly good reading. The authors are well aware that human nature is at the heart of the disasters they document, and they enliven the text with brief and amusing accounts of charlatans and cheats."---Paul Wiseman, USA Today
"For those who want to relearn the forgotten lessons of the past, This Time Is Different, by economics professors Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, is an excellent place to start. . . . These are lessons worth learning."---Liaquat Ahamed, National Interest
"Here's a deep and rewarding assignment for all of you, young and old, poor and rich, bullish and bearish. Retire to a quiet spot with a copy of This Time Is Different."---Bob Lenzner, Forbes.com
"I couldn't put it down."---Richard Sylla, EH.Net
"One book in particular has been circulating among economists and market insiders. This Time Is Different analyzes vast amounts of historical data on financial debacles, including state failures around the world, bank crises, currency woes and high inflation. The title satirizes those who fail to learn from past blunders and repeat them while insisting, 'This time is different.'"---Hideo Tsuchiya, Nikkei Weekly
"Perhaps the finest study of financial crises ever published."---Ezra Klein, Washington Post
"Reinhart and Rogoff give us a data-driven study that is global in sweep but also a model of clarity. The authors package their notably nonhysterical analysis of the latest crisis in a large, self-contained section of the book inviting harried readers to skip right ahead to it."---Daniel Akst, CNNMoney.com
"Seminal."---Rana Faroohar and Bill Saporito, Time
"Superb."---Neil Reynolds, Globe & Mail
"The book will be essential reading for anyone who wants to put the recent crisis into some historical perspective--and get some ideas on how to prevent, or at least delay, the next one."---David Orrell, Foresight
"The definitive book on financial crises."---Steven Pearlstein, Washington Post
"The most comprehensive study of financial crises and their aftermath."---Eduardo Porter, New York Times
"The pre-eminent history of financial crises."---Adam Davidson, New York Times Magazine
"Two top-notch economists provide a clear and interesting explanation of why economic crises keep occurring."---David Schwartz, Financial Times
"This Time is Different takes a Sergeant Friday, just-the-facts-ma'am approach: before we start theorizing, let's take a hard look at what history tells us. One side benefit of this approach is that the current book manages to be both extremely useful to professional economists and accessible to the intelligent lay reader. The Reinhart-Rogoff approach has already paid off handsomely in making sense of current events."---Robin Wells and Paul Krugman, New York Review of Books
"[A] fine new history of financial debacles."---Daniel Gross, Newsweek
"[A] masterpiece."---Martin Wolf, Financial Times
"[A] modern classic. . . . In their landmark study of hundreds of financial crises in 66 countries over 800 years, Reinhart and Rogoff find oft-repeated patterns that ought to alert economists when trouble is on the way. One thing stops them waking up in time: their perpetual belief that 'this time is different.'"---Ross Gittins, Sydney Morning Herald
"[A] terrific book."---Andrew Ross Sorkin, New York Times
"Easily the most useful, and arguably the best, is this splendid piece of research and analysis on, as the subtitle says, 800 years' worth of booms and busts."---Bill Emmott, Survival
"It's the only book I have seen that provides, with great detail and over 800 years, clearly defined, analytical, data-driven evidence of what the impact of a post-financial crisis period is and hence what we can anticipate. . . . I've never seen anything that comes close in terms of being comprehensive. It's a tour de force."---Dambisa Moyo, The Browser
"Readable, shocking, and vital, this is a book that every investor who has been tempted by a hefty interest rate in a faraway land should study."---Andrew Allentuck, National Post
"Reinhart and Rogoff have produced a splendid book detailing the massive self-destructive behavior that all states have been undergoing over the past several centuries. . . . Reading this excellent book on the paths of previous economic cycles could help avoid some of the worst results of our self-destructive financial acts."---Lloyd Demause, Journal of Psychohistory
"Reinhart and Rogoff's book belongs to the tradition of studies that appear in the middle of a crisis but it manages to keep its spine above water because of its historical depth and systematic rigour."---Sakis Gekas, Dublin Review of Books
"Wouldn't it be nice to have $1,000 for every time a pundit proclaims an era of endless prosperity, consigning booms and busts to the dumpster of history? The next time you hear that canard (and you will) pour yourself a single malt and dip into Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff's landmark study, This Time Is Different. Wherever you open the book, you'll find proof that debt-fueled expansions have ended in financial ruin for hundreds of years. . . . The result is a visual history laid out in beguilingly simple graphs and tables, making the book both definitive--a must read for professors and investors--and accessible to a wider audience."---James Pressley, Bloomberg News
