From Finnish Great Depression to Great Recession
Gulan, Adam; Haavio, Markus; Kilponen, Juha (12.05.2014)
Volyymi
88Numero
3Julkaisija
Bank of Finland
2014
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:bof-201410283064Tiivistelmä
The Finnish economy has experienced three major recessions over the last 25 years, all very different in nature. The turn of the century witnessed the bursting of the dot-com bubble in the ‘Nokia economy’. The country was also severely hit by the global financial crisis of 2007–2008 and the ‘Great Recession’ that followed. However, the most serious episode was the prolonged contraction of the early 1990s, known in Finland as the ‘Finnish Great Depression’. In this article, we use an empirical structural vector autoregression approach to identify different factors that could explain the Finnish business cycle, and the 1990–1993 contraction in particular. We estimate the model of a small open economy, in which we identify both real and financial shocks, from both the demand and the supply side. Shocks are identified by using state-of-the-art sign restrictions methodology. Our approach allows us to study the propagation mechanisms of the shocks and the role of macro-financial linkages. In comparison with earlier studies of the Finnish Great Depression, our approach allows us to quantify the relative importance of different factors.