Economists still lack a proper understanding of business cycles

Where consensus did prevail, it proved to be misguided. 

Economists of all ideological stripes cheered on the financial deregulation of the 1980s and 1990s. The work of thinkers like Hyman Minsky and Charles Kindleberger, whose writings on financial excess were rediscovered after the financial crisis, gathered dust.

In a speech in 2005 to central bankers, Raghuram Rajan, an academic who later ran India’s central bank, warned of the risks building within the financial system. He got a chilly reception.

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