Economists in the 2008 financial crisis: Slow to see, fast to act

Arbeitspapier

We study the economics and finance scholars' reaction to the 2008 financial crisis using machine learning language analyses methods of Latent Dirichlet Allocation and dynamic topic modelling algorithms, to analyze the texts of 14,270 NBER working papers covering the 1999-2016 period. We find that academic scholars as a group were insufficiently engaged in crises' studies before 2008. As the crisis unraveled, however, they switched their focus to studying the crisis, its causes, and consequences. Thus, the scholars were "slow-to-see," but they were "fast-to-act." Their initial response to the ongoing Covid-19 crisis is consistent with these conclusions.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: Working Paper ; No. 2022-01

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Business Fluctuations; Cycles ; Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy ; Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit: General ; International Finance: General ; Financial Crises ; Financial Institutions and Services: General
• Subject: Financial crisis ; Economic Crisis ; Great recession ; NBER working papers ; LDA textual analysis ; Topic modeling ; Dynamic Topic Modeling ; Machine learning

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Levy, Daniel C. ; Mayer, Tamir ; Raviv, Alon
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Bar-Ilan University, Department of Economics
• (where): Ramat-Gan
• (when): 2022

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/272971
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:44 AM CET