Here are some graphs from my presentation yesterday to the St. Louis Fed (the talk was trying to convince them to start a blog along the lines of what David Altig did in Cleveland, so the main theme was not the graphs below). The graphs show what happens to GDP after a financial crisis. In some cases the effects seem permanent, in others they appear temporary. What I'd like to do next is figure out if there are any systematic differences between the countries that experience permanent versus temporary effects that can be used to understand why they have such different outcomes. Is it the type of shock? The policy response? Institutional differences? And so on (source of graphs - the vertical blue line marks the start of the crisis):

US after the Great Depression



Hong Kong



Colombia



Spain



Sweden



South Korea



Philippines



Indonesia



Argentina



Japan



Norway



Thailand



Malaysia



Finland



One more note. If you had looked at this graph (from The Economist, the one on the left), you would likely conclude that the fall in GDP for Sweden is permanent:



Sweden and Korea



That looks a lot like the US right now. But if you extend the graph for a few years, the picture changes dramatically:

Sweden

Is the US like Sweden? Or not?