New book by GM Ken Rogoff

Editorial Reviews

Review

The authors use copious amounts of data . . . to make the compelling case that any well-informed person should have seen the Great Recession coming. The essence of their book 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 )

Reinhart and Rogoff have compiled an impressive database, which covers eight centuries of government debt defaults from around the world. They have also collected statistics on inflation rates from every country where information is available and on banking crises and international capital flows over the past couple of centuries. This lengthy historical study gives what they call a ‘panoramic view’ of the unending cycle of boom and bust, showing how claims that ‘this time is different’ are invariably proven wrong. . . . 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. . . . This Time Is Different is an important addition to the literature of financial history.
(Edward Chancellor Wall Street Journal )

[E]ssential reading . . . both for its originality and for the sobering patterns of financial behaviour it reveals.
(Economist )

The four most dangerous words in finance are ‘this time is different.’ Thanks to this masterpiece by Carmen Reinhart at the University of Maryland and Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard, no one can doubt this again. . . . The authors have put an immense amount of work into collecting the data financial institutions needed if they were to have any chance of making quantitative risk management work.
(Martin Wolf Financial 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 )

[A] fine new history of financial debacles.
(Daniel Gross Newsweek )

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 )

Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff have delivered 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 The American Interest )

This is certainly one of the must-read books of the year.
(Arnold Kling Econlog.com )

Rogoff and Reinhart . . . provide an eye-opening look at the cycles of boom and bust and how governments deal with those cycles.
(Arkansas Business )

[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 )

More info about this book here.